Systems Thinking

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When it comes to accidents, manufacturing ranks second highest of all industries. That comes despite OSHA regulations and American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standards. A key culprit is unguarded hazardous machinery. 

As OSHA continues to update its 2016 rule on recording and reporting workplace injuries and illnesses, organizations should be aware of new policies that affect how they treat – and reward – safety in the workplace.

Crystalline silica is one of the most common elements on the planet, just behind oxygen. About 2.3 million workers are exposed to it in their workplace. It’s about 100 times smaller than sand and can be found on construction sites in building materials such as concrete, block, stone, sand, and mortar.

The 2018 print edition of NFPA 70E Standard for Electrical Safety in the Workplace® is 104 pages. Updated every three years by the 70E technical committee, this comprehensive standard covers the latest information about the effects of shock, arc flash, arc blast, dc hazards, and developments in electrical design, PPE.

What is a High Reliability Organization? The work is highly technical and complex, operators require a high level of technical training and certification, and the consequences of error can be catastrophic. Hence, “it has to be done right every time.”

Not many people walk around throughout their day with a risk assessment in hand. We should, however, always have an informal risk assessment tool in our mind that allows us to perform at least a cursory assessment until we can dig deeper or in a more formal way.

The New View is fundamentally the application of systems thinking to workplace health and safety. It considers safety an emergent property of the system. So what does that jargon mean? Instead of focusing on an individual thing, the organization steps back and takes a broader view.

It’s long overdue, according to Dr. Sidney Dekker, who in 2014 wrote an essay on “The ‘Failed State’ of Safety.” Yes, says Corrie Pitzer, who is giving a talk, “Safety at a Dead End” at the American Society of Safety Professionals’ annual conference this June.

Allergan plc, headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, is a global pharmaceutical company. ISHN asked David Eherts, PhD, CIH, Vice President Global EHS, based in Madison, NJ, to explain how the company is implementing the “New View” of safety.