The Smurfit Kappa Group is a world leader in the paper-based packaging industry, producing over 12 million tons of paper annually, employing over 40,000 individuals, and operating over 300 plants and mills worldwide. Four Years ago, with dozens of manufacturing sites across the UK, each using their own variation of a paper-based safety incident tracking system, Smurfit Kappa Recycling wanted to remedy this disjointed approach and implement a system to standardize and streamline the recording, tracking and reporting of safety incidents across their UK sites.

Smurfit Kappa selected Intelex’s Safety Incidents Reporting application to meet their needs as it provided a centralized reporting system, accessible via the web by any employee at any location. Smurfit Kappa’s paper incident form was translated into an easy-to-complete digital version and a simple user interface was configured so that upon logging in, users were presented with the incident form, ready to be completed and submitted.

“Intelex’s Safety Incident Reporting Application provided such a high level of visibility into our safety performance that we were able to identify areas for improvement that would have never been uncovered otherwise. Detecting root causes and driving corrective and preventive actions, it has been a critical component to the success of our entire safety program and maintaining OHSAS 18001 conformance,” commented Mark Montgomery, Compliance Manger for Smurfit Kappa Recycling UK who spearheaded the project.

Since implementing Intelex’s Safety Incident Reporting application 4 years ago, Smurfit Kappa Recycling has experienced significant savings and has seen vast improvements in their safety performance. Quantifiable results include a 58% reduction in lost-time accidents and a 63% reduction in number of absent days through injury. Also, per annum their accident frequency rate reduced from 1.9 to 0.83 and accident severity rate reduced from 32.52 to 8.55. The elimination of paper forms streamlined the reporting process and centralized all of their safety incident data, making it instantly available for review and analysis through real-time reports and dashboards. The user-friendliness of the application resulted in the recording of virtually all occurrences of incidents, near-misses and hazards, improving the ability to trend and analyze data.

To learn more about Intelex’s Safety Incident Reporting application – click here.

Having a damaging effect on the ozone layer, refrigerant gasses are part of a class of substances called ozone-depleting chemicals (ODC) which need to be controlled to eliminate their dispersion into the atmosphere. As many areas of industry rely heavily on refrigerants as part of their business processes, a need has been created to carefully address the control and release of these substances. One regulatory attempt at this is the EPA’s U.S. Clean Air Act (CAA), which is a congressional law that explains the EPA’s task in protecting air quality and the ozone layer. Section 608 of this law deals specifically with refrigerants and speaks to those using them in industrial and commercial applications.

CAA Section 608
Requires owners or operators of systems containing 50 pounds of refrigerant gas or more to maintain detailed service records, ensure that the leak rate does not exceed 15% for comfort cooling equipment or 35% for commercial refrigeration & industrial process refrigeration equipment and to take corrective actions when necessary.

Along with the current refrigerant regulations it can be speculated that future EPA mandatory rules will continue to include the reporting of refrigerants due to their high global warming potential, it is for this reason that Intelex has developed the Refrigerant Management System, to help organizations comply with these rules and curb the impact on the ozone layer that these gasses cause.

The Intelex Refrigerant Management System (RMS)
Provides an easy and complete solution for tracking and reporting refrigerant usage, leaks, tests, repairs, purchases and disposal while ensuring compliance with refrigerant regulations including EPA 608.

Enabling complete refrigerant lifecycle management, the Intelex RMS allows you to easily manage your inventory usage from purchase through to disposal in real-time. It simplifies and streamlines compliance sending automated notifications for above standard leak-rates and the associated equipment repair tasks. Consolidating all data into one central repository, Intelex’s web-based platform facilitates corporate-wide performance reporting, trending and analysis of all refrigerant related data.

Speaking on the issue the issue, Laura Scott, Environmental Specialist at leading energy provider NRG commented, “Organizations and facilities have been able to adequately track and monitor refrigerant with simple reporting tools for some time. The increase in reporting requirements and integration of data makes it necessary to incorporate management systems, such as Intelex, to track refrigerant at the facility level and report up to the corporate level to consolidate data. It is important to have your organization positioned to maintain compliance and meet reporting requirements.”

The Intelex RMS stores, tracks and reports on the following data types:

• Technician Certification & Training Records
• Equipment Service Records
• Refrigerant Purchases
• Disposal Records
• Usage & Recovery Logs
• Accidental Release Logs
• Leak Rates
• Verification Test Results
• Refrigerant Equipment
• Refrigerant Types by Equipment 
  
  Learn More about the Intelex Refrigerant Management System or request a Live Demo today.
  

For any company who deals with multiple manufacturers and suppliers in the production of their product, it can become problematic at times to ensure that the most recent and up-to-date versions of documents related product specifications and manufacturing processes are being used by these 3rd parties. This was one of the critical elements that WD-40 Company wanted to address when they were assembling their Quality Management System. It is for this reason that they selected Intelex to provide them with a solution to address their document management needs.

Leveraging Intelex's web-based platform and document control module, WD-40 Company was able to create a centralized online portal, accessible to everyone involved in their manufacturing process around the globe, where they can access the most recent design specification and process documents to build from.

To read more about how WD-40 Company utilized Intelex's web-based software solutions, read the article featured in Quality Magazine's recent "How To" issue here.

For the month of February, Intelex set out with a goal of raising $10,000 in support of the Canadian Red Cross relief efforts in Haiti. To get the initiative rolling, Intelex graciously donated an initial $5000 and pledged to match any additional contributions from our team of Intelexians above and beyond that $5000. With everyone digging into their pockets, the generosity of the Intelex team was in full force as we managed to raise another $5,385 which was matched by Intelex bringing our total to $15,770. With the Canadian Government matching all donations, Intelex was able to contribute an impressive $31,540 towards this deserving cause.

Thank You to everyone who donated for your generosity!

Along with our Middle Eastern partner Barik IT Solutions, Intelex is pleased to announce two new additions to our client roster, Majan Electricity Company and Daleel Petroleum both located in Oman, have selected Intelex Technologies to provide them with an EHS Management System.

Both companies are key players in Oman’s energy industry with Majan Electricity being a leader in electricity distribution and supply and Daleel Petroleum a top oil and gas operator. Majan Electricity selected the Intelex EHS Management System as a means of automating all of their Environmental, Health & Safety processes into one unified system, working to effectively manage and track such core business components as Audits Management, EHS Training, Incident Reporting, Permit Management, Document Control, Environmental Management and Risk Assessments. Daleel Petroleum selected Intelex’s Safety Management System as a means of automating and tracking their EHS activities across all of their operating sites. Both companies will be leveraging the web-based Intelex platform to foster real-time reporting and generating a complete 360-degree view into their EHS business processes and performances.

To learn more about how an Intelex solution can help you improve your organization's EHS performance, request a free demo here.

Intelex is pleased to announce they have been selected by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory to provide a Training and Licensing Management System for their 4800 employees. The Laboratory, one of nine Johns Hopkins divisions, approached Intelex in search of a cost effective IT system that would allow them to streamline the management of their employee training and certification requirements at the departmental level.

The Intelex Training and Licensing Management System that they selected has the ability to establish specific training requirement and certification standards associated with any workgroup, is robust enough to accommodate a large number of employees, and is highly automated allowing for easy scheduling and re-scheduling of training. The Compliance Report, which is a pre-built feature of the system fosters the generation of real-time reports drawn from all training data in the system. Key reporting metrics include: assigned training by employee, training hours completed, training hours pending, certifications completed, certifications pending, certification renewals approaching as well as data specific to individual courses such as the number of employees assigned to a course and the number completed.

"We are excited to add John Hopkins University to our educational client roster along with others like the University of Virginia and Texas A&M University," commented Intelex President and CEO Mark Jaine, "Our EHSQ software systems have been gaining a lot of momentum within the education industry and we are looking ahead to continue this trend and provide solutions unique to the industry's needs." With the Intelex system being highly scalable in nature, it will be able to adapt to the expanding needs of the University and ultimately not be outgrown.

Find out more about Intelex's Training and Licensing Management System.

Intelex held its annual Vision Meeting with much success last week in the ballroom of the Renaissance Hotel located in Toronto's Rogers Center, home of the Toronto Blue Jays. Each year, the Vision Meeting is held as an opportunity for the entire Intelex team to spend a day together and get to know each other and the company better. At the same time, the meeting is designed to generate employee feedback and input on how to improve all aspects of the organization. Hosted by Intelex President and CEO Mark Jaine, the event consisted of three separate presentations looking at performance in the 2009 fiscal year, focus and priorities for 2010, and a sneak peek at the highly anticipated Intelex.net system. A variety of group activities were conducted in between presentations with the annual Intelex jingle/skit competition returning by popular demand and exposing some unknown internal talent.

A complete success, the 2010 Vision Meeting yielded some informative presentations, valuable input and suggestions, and helped to solidify the visionary nature and unique culture here at Intelex. Having achieved at least 40% revenue growth each year over the past 8 years, and with a current team of 95 talented employees and counting, Intelex has grown to establish itself as a pioneer and leader in the EHSQ software industry.

Thanks to everyone for participating, we are looking forward to next year already.

Intelex, in partnership with our Middle East partner – Barik Group, is pleased to announce the continuing growth of our Middle Eastern client base with the addition of Fahud Oilfield Services (FOS) based in Oman. FOS is one of the major oil & gas services companies in Oman and began its operations in 1999 with a government initiative that encouraged the strengthening of the local infrastructure by the development of Omani owned companies. During those years FOS has built a solid reputation in the exploration testing business and is now Oman’s leading well testing company having just completed 7 years of continuous operations without a single lost time incident.

Specializing in a range of oilfield services, notably well testing services, reservoir information services and multi phase testing services, FOS was looking for an IT solution to streamline their training program for all their business units in order to increase their overall organizational performance. They selected Intelex’s Training Management Module as it allowed them to streamline their training management workflow, actively track employee skill levels, training and certifications, and its web-based platform allowed for multiple sites to easily access the system.

Intelex is excited to announce the new Training Quiz Builder Module that has been designed to enable organizations to develop customized training quizzes for competency testing as part of their employee training programs. Working in conjunction with the Intelex Document Control and Training Management Modules, it facilitates the creation of training quizzes, presentation of training materials, testing of employees and tracking of employee training records.

Module Overview
The Intelex Training Quiz Builder was designed to streamline and strengthen the employee training process. Using this module an organization will have the ability to:
Create individual quizzes; formulate either multiple choice style or comment style questions.

-Load training materials (PowerPoint, Flash, external links to CBT content) directly into the module thereby enhancing users experience and retention.

-Associate training with any document stored in the Document Control Module (Policies, Procedures, Work Instructions or Training Materials) to evaluate employee knowledge and competence of that specific document/task.

-Establish scoring thresholds to set pass/fail standards to gate employee progress.

-Actively track and update employee training records for successful and failed attempts.

-Generate reports based on results.

-Automatically notify employees about new documents that have been released or revisions to existing documents that competence must be tested on.
 
Implementing the Intelex Training Quiz Builder will enable your organization to fine-tune their employee training program to reflect the competencies associated with specific jobs, sites, and levels of designation. Working in conjunction with the Intelex Training Management module, the Training Quiz Builder can facilitate an employee training program that is highly configurable with the ability to easily manage company growth, changes in policies and procedures and any other developments that a company may experience.

To learn more request a demonstration today!

Intelex is pleased to announce that Virgin Atlantic Airways (VAA) has gone live with their Intelex Safety Management System organization-wide. VAA, one of the world's leading long haul airlines, employs over 9,000 people and has flown over 65 million passengers in its recently celebrated 25 years of existence. VAA first approached Intelex in search of a solution to unify their multiple incident reporting processes into a single streamlined application that could be accessible to all staff across the entire company. After an analysis of the functionality of the Intelex system to meet their requirements, the Intelex platform was selected as it allowed VAA to utilize proven Intelex modules as well as the versatile Intelex iForm® tool to create their own customized Incident Reporting Management and Analysis System (IRMA).

With the new 100% web-based system launched, all VAA employees can now access Intelex's system from any location. VAA is now actively monitoring and tracking all non conformances, maintaining auditor's checklists, proactively assessing risks, analyzing incidents and tracking, managing and reporting on safety meetings and employee training. By implementing an integrated Intelex solution, VAA was able to significantly increase the integrity and usability of the data they were capturing, all through a very simple and user-friendly interface. Congrats to everyone on both the VAA and Intelex teams who worked on this project to make it such a success!