I have recently converted our production facilities over to dissipative
shoes after an exhaustive (three years) study into the feasibility and cost
savings aspects of taking on such a crazy task.

The crazy side of this is that there are a million problems when you try to
set up a contract to cover all of the sizes and unique feet that exist
across say a thousand workers.

The good news is that we are six months past the inception and it is going
well after a rocky start.  We still use heelstraps for new employees until
we can get them fitted and wearing the shoes.  We also demand that the
operators wear the shoes, because after all, we paid for them 100%.  The
employees considered it a moral booster, after all, wouldn't you like it if
your company were to pay for a nice pair of comfortable shoes that are
guaranteed for at least one year.

The cost savings aspects of shoes versus straps continues to grow as we
discover more and more benefits due to the shoes.  I justified the shoes on
the avoidance of test logs, and the annual inherent cost of heelstraps
(which we found to work at best only for four months).

The major technical reason for the conversion is that the shoes, once
verified to work properly, never fail for any reason thereafter.  A claim
that no heelstrap can make.  Accordingly the strap test logs go away as
there is no reason to log in 100 acceptance.

I was one of the guinea pigs for the evaluation so I can personally say
that the shoes do not make your feet sweat in order to work and in fact I
felt that they were more comfortable than my original shoes which were
R***ports (and I was an avid believer in those shoes).

The major obstacles were convincing management to pay 100%, and then to
select the correct styles and brands so that male and female wearers from a
size 5 up to 15 were all accounted for.

Another problem with heelstraps is that wriststraps are required when
seated.  Try testing an operator wearing shoes while seated and you'll know
why esd chair manufacturers aren't allowed in our facility.



Phil Bavaro
Qualcomm Inc



At 08:05 AM 7/31/97 -0400, [log in to unmask] wrote:
>After trying both, here is my opinion...a)  heel straps work good if you use
>them
>and if you use them on both feet.  People put one leg up while working a lot
>and
>then your not grounded.  They are cheap, wear out a lot and people forget to
>use
>them or not put them on proplerly.
>
>                                                       b)  foot wear, shoes
>or boots are expensive,
>a pain to set up for people to get the right size, etc. especially if you
>have a shoe
>truck come in.  But, you realy should not wear the same shoes every day, and
>the
>most important fact, the shoes get the foot hot and sweaty (that's the way
>they
>work) and people don't like them for that reason.  If they take the shoes
>home
>and don't wear them the next day, then you need straps, there are other
>negatives.
>But, they work good.
>
>Therefore, as straps work good, and if you police the practice, that's the
>better way in my opinion.
>
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