Tools And Techniques For The Achievement Of Zero Risk

SPC techniques:

A continuous improvement programme with Zero Risk as the ultimate objective seeks to identify and eliminate hazards before they develop into major failures or lead to serious injuries. The use of SPC techniques is required for this purpose. The following approach needs to be adopted:

1 Process understanding to identify possible hazards (use flowcharting);

2 Hazard identification and selection for study (use tally sheets for data collection);

3 Use Pareto analysis, data stratification, cause-effect analysis and scatter diagrams to identify causes and eliminate the hazard

4 Use of control charts: There may be some random causes which mean that hazards cannot be completely eliminated and therefore the use of control charts would mean that the hazards are confined and contained so that they will never develop into major disasters.

Types of the control charts:

The two types of control charts used in safety are the attribute charts P and C.

(i)Behaviour Outcome Control Chart (P): Based on binomial probability. Refers to large populations (safe, unsafe) criteria.

(ii) Accident Control Chart (C): Follows Poisson distribution which refers to limited number of observations over units of time. C chart is used for determining when accident frequency is out of control or when unstable accident frequency patterns are present. Through continuous analysis of trends in their positive/ negative developments, one can predict future possible outcomes and take appropriate measures to eliminate severe incidents.

Benefits of using Safety Control Charts:

1.       Control charts provide a true measure of safety performance for each individual process and can be used to establish and improve overall safety standards within organisations ;

2.       They seek to establish stable processes in terms of risk presence/development;

3.       Their main objective is to minimise and ultimately eliminate persisting risks so that Zero Risk becomes a realisable objective;

4.       They consider safety as a productive function by linking objectives of Zero

5.       Defect, Zero Breakdown and Zero Risk for the achievement of the common objective of meeting customer requirements;

6.       They encourage shared responsibility for raising safety standards by allocating process ownership to operators and people who are directly involved in performing the tasks;

7.       They provide the best motivational method since process improvement is carried out by and standards are set by the workers themselves;

8.       The availability of on-line data on hazard identification, monitoring and control can enable the safety adviser and safety steering committee to assess existing standards accurately and to devise realistic improvement targets;

9.       More accurate measures of costs can be obtained since safety is accepted as an intrinsic part of process performance and therefore its productive output can be measured;

          10 They have a major impact on corporate image and company respectability in the market place.

      11 Savings from accident reduction, risk elimination and reductions in employee absence due to injuries, mean that money can be re-allocated to better the working environment;

       12 Total Safety Systems mean that compliance with legislative requirements is not a measure of safety performance. Performance     targets are set internally by seeking to establish a Zero Risk environment and externally by identifying and introducing best safety practice.

One of the typical reactions of management to dealing with safety hazards is the consideration of automation and computerization as a cure to all the ills. Particularly, automation is considered to be capable of eliminating all accidents which are caused by human error. This raises two main questions:

• Are safety problems a behavioral question?
• Is new technology a cure to safety problems?