Diversifying work styles, the use of employee welfare facilities before and after working hours, and other factors have made it difficult to accurately track the number of people present in the plant at Okayama Murata Manufacturing. Movement between buildings has also increased. That made it difficult to accurately track who is in which building. Issues have appeared in confirming safety in the event of a disaster because it is not possible to track the number of people present and their location in real time.
Currently, safety is confirmed using the "tonarigumi system" in which small groups mutually confirm the safety of each individual. However, it takes time to confirm safety with this system because it involves many manual tasks such as checking the people present against a register of names. Moreover, although it is possible to track the number of people who have evacuated using the tonarigumi system, it is not possible to track the number of people who should be present. That means it is not possible to track whether everyone has evacuated safely.
Furthermore, the total system fire extinguishing equipment installed in processes where large amounts of hazardous materials are used is set to activate only after it is confirmed that the employees in the process have evacuated. However, there was no system in place to accurately determine whether everyone had evacuated.
In addition, maintaining tonarigumi management charts is also a burden.