One of the more critical elements of an SMS is “auditing.” In the Plan-Do-Check-Act model, auditing falls within the “CHECK” function. I like to say it’s the element that keeps us honest and informed. And with that in mind, I break down my audits into three (3) layers: → 1st Party → 2nd Party →…...
If your team is focused on an event’s probability or likelihood, you’re NOT doing SIF! The Serious Injuries and Fatalities (SIF) model is intended to IDENTIFY events that have opportunities to cause life-altering injuries and death. And yes, most of these will (hopefully) have LOW frequencies/probabilities. So, to justify NOT responding to these LOW frequency…...
The purpose of barrier[/controls/safeguards] management is to make the kind of implicit controls explicit: to be clear about exactly what controls are relied on to prevent incidents, to understand their characteristics, to have an understanding of how reliable they can be expected to be, and to know what needs to be done to ensure the…...
We have all seen them; most of us have used them to deliver a safety message. Let me say this up-front: it is never the banner’s fault! A SAFTENG member was reading my posts about “safety banners” and contacted me to discuss their use. They were convinced I was 100% against using “safety banners” after…...
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VW chose Tennessee for its new assembly plant because it is a “right to work” state. The union campaigns lost in 2014 and 2019, but last week, it won big (2,628 for and 985 opposed), at least based on the NLRB count so far. A few votes are being challenged, but nothing near the number…...
Some raw materials are sensitive to humidity; this valve sticks and is more demanding than its supposedly similar neighbor; that pump has broken down; this operation sometimes occurs at night and sometimes during the day, sometimes when it’s hot, other times when it’s cold, sometimes our co-worker is tall, sometimes he is short, we may…...
If you have ever attended one of my SMS presentations or training courses, you know I am a huge Edward Demming fan. I started my career during the ISO 9001 era, which many call the “Quality Era.” Do you remember Ford’s slogan in the 1990s? “Quality is #1,” and the ISO quality movement was considerably…...
One of the finest men I ever worked for, Jim Krumholz, taught me this trick in 1999! Manager MUST attend the “safety training” their employees attend! Even if this manager would never participate in an entry into PRCS, perform HW, or even participate in a lockout, they need to understand the expectations of their team…...
A safety partnership is defined as: Leadership, managers, and front-line associates jointly focus on safety and proactively work together in a business entity to minimize the possibility of harm and maximize safety performance. (Cooper, 2016) Creating a genuine safety partnership means management and the workforce jointly working towards achieving common and understood safety goals, with…...
This picture has caused quite the debate in the SAFTENG circle! Many comments in the SAFTENG LI and FB groups point towards the worker(s), which indicates the belief that this is an “Active Failure” of the worker(s) involved. Many of you would NOT believe the tales I could tell about what I have encountered in…...
“Most adverse events have their origin in two places: the systems we design around the humans and the choices of humans within those systems The resulting harm and the human errors (slips, lapses, and mistakes) that may have caused it are really two forms of outcome—outcomes to be monitored, studied, and perhaps grieved. Systems and…...
