Loss prevention principles

Each Dow location is required to establish a loss prevention program base on hazard evaluation and designed to reduce the probability and magnitude of incidents. Programs must include the following elements, based on criteria and guidelines contained in Dow s Loss Prevention Principles. ... 

Dow s Loss Prevention Principles (LPPs) are a collection of design and installation practices which experience has shown to result in safer and more reliable operations (5). They constitute recommendations to be followed, where appropriate, in plant design and modifications. 

Loss prevention principles are dynamic tools, changing as needed to keep up with improving methods. A new edition of the LPP manual, containing several hundred pages, is published every two years. Part of the safety and loss prevention responsibility of Dow employees is to make certain that improved methods appear in the next edition of the LPP manual. The current (1986) edition contains 94 loss protection principles addressing 17 major elements of plant design. 

A typical loss prevention principle, LPP 7.1, deals with the storage of flammable liquids. It defines flammable liquids, then discusses eight factors to be considered in storing such chemicals. The major factors, each with several subdivisions, are ... 

Loss Prevention Principles, The Dow Chemical Company, Midland, Michigan, February 1986. 

In an ideal world, an easy-to-contact, responsive modifications man would be available for questions generated in Operations, Engineering, and Maintenance. This modifications man could be a Process Safety Engineer, Loss Prevention Engineer, or a mechanical or chemical engineer who has been trained in chemical process safety. Preferably, this individual would be an on-site plant employee, but he could be a company regional engineer, a property insurance consultant, or a contractor. The modifications man must understand basic loss-prevention principles of proper layout. 

The two different, but related, considerations in waste disposal are hazard control and loss prevention in the treatment and disposal operations, and the control of environmental hazards. With gas and liquid streams the control of on-site hazards arising from the chemical properties and processing operations generally follows the principles summarized in earlier chapters. The measures necessary with solid wastes may, however, differ, particularly if they are heterogeneous in nature and disposed of on land. 

Tweeddale H.M., 1995. Principles and practises for designing of process safety monitoring and auditing programmes, Proceedings of the 8th International symposium on Loss Prevention and Safety Promotion in the process industries, Antwerpen, pp. 71-82. 

The pollution prevention principle presupposes that all environmental pressure is potentially harmful. Conservative approaches are necessary to protect the environment because multiple stressors due to the presence of low concentrations of more than one substance or unexpected effects of metabolites (e.g., hormone disruption) can never be excluded. This opinion is in line with the community conditioning hypothesis (Matthews et al. 1996), which states that ecological communities tend to preserve information about every event in their history, including stress by substances. It is also in line with the rivet hypothesis (Ehrlich and Ehrlich 1981), which presupposes that each loss of a species (equivalent to a rivet in the analogy) affects ecosystem integrity to a small extent, and, if too many rivets are lost, the system collapses. 

The managanent principles that management team members use in daily supervision of production, quality control, or any other operation are the same when managing safety in the workplace. In production, the supervisor plans, organizes, directs, and controls operations to produce a product, while in safety and loss prevention, the supervisor plans, organizes, directs, and controls the safety and loss prevention function in the workplace. Basic management skills utilized in production and quality are transferable to the safety and loss prevention function. 

A full account of the developments of this concept is given in Lees, Kletz (1984) and UMIST (1982). The Loss Prevention Bulletin (published by the Institution of Chemical Engineers, England) is also a must for interested people. It is available in most technical libraries and a list of its main articles over the years is included in Lees. The basic principles of inherently safer designs in the process industry are ... 

System safety may grow as a separate discipline or the system safety effort may be absorbed into the mainstream of industrial safety, loss prevention, risk management, loss control, or some other program. A new name or buzzword may appear. Nevertheless, the need for first-time safe systems and for the application of system safety principles, tools, and techniques to systematically identify, analyze, and control hazards as early in the life cycle as possible (with continuing efforts throughout the life cycle) will continue to grow indefinitely. 

Apart from the engineering principles considered in the plant design, there are other important functions and items to be considered regarding safety, health, loss prevention, plant location, plant layout, and others. 

This information is used to forecast or predict future losses. This experience rating uses cost predictions and incentives for loss prevention combined with sound insurance and statistical principles. Providing accurate information is extremely important. If the information you provide is not accurate, it may be viewed as fraud, and may skew your future loss ratios, increasing insurance premiums. 

Fixed-roof atmospheric tanks require vents to prevent pressure changes which would othei wise result from temperature changes and withdrawal or addition of liquid. API Standard 2000, Venting Atmospheric and Low Pressure Storage Tanks, gives practical rules for vent design. The principles of this standard can be applied to fluids other than petroleum products. Excessive losses of volatile liquids, particularly those with flash points below 38°C (100°F), may result from the use of open vents on fixed-roof tanks. Sometimes vents are manifolded and led to a vent tank, or the vapor may be extracted by a recov-eiy system. 

The selection of materials to be used in design dictates a basic understanding of the behavior of materials and the principles that govern such behavior. If proper design of suitable materials of construction is incorporated, the eqiiipment should deteriorate at a uniform and anticipated gradual rate, which will allow scheduled maintenance or replacement at regular inteivals. If localized forms of corrosion are characteristic of the combination of materials and environment, the materials engineer should still be able to predict the probable life of equipment, or devise an appropriate inspection schedule to preclude unexpected failures. The concepts of predictive, or at least preventive, maintenance are minimum requirements to proper materials selection. This approach to maintenance is certainly intended to minimize the possibility of unscheduled production shutdowns because of corrosion failures, with their attendant possible financial losses, hazard to personnel and equipment, and resultant environmental pollution. 

In the final analysis, market price and sales volume are functions of the quality standards offered and the buyer s degree of confidence that the product will conform to the standards. Maintenance of buyer s confidence requires inspection to screen out all nonconforming products, or control over variability of quality during production and distribution to a degree where few, if any, products fail to meet the standards. Screening inspection of the finished product cannot improve quality it merely serves to segregate unacceptable from acceptable product, and results in loss of production capacity and costly waste and salvage. The second consideration provides the only sound basis for quality control in frozen food production and distribution. It operates on the old principle that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. ... 

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