Set Standards of Performance Measurement

Standards in safety are referred to as measurable management performances. Standards are set for the level of work to be done to maintain a safe and healthy environment free from actual and potential accidental loss. Standards are established in writing for all the safety and health management system elements. Without standards the management system has no direction, and safety expectations cannot be established. (If you don t know where you re going, any road will take you there.) 

Setting standards for the safety of the woikplace will entail determining the major areas of risk and, in conjunction with various committees, unions, and anployees, drawing up acceptable standards for items such as  

A lot of these standards have already been defined and written by prominent safety organizations in various countries, and the safety wheel need not be reinvented. Local safety and health legislation also prescribes certain standards, and these could be used as a guideline. Many years of research and input from numerous quarters have contributed to the development of these standards. 

Management should modify these standards to suit their company s requirements but should not water down or eliminate the standards because they are too difficult to achieve. 

The standards should be measurable management criteria, and therefore they should be reasonable, attainable, and quantifiable. Standards would also include time frames for initial completion and ongoing updates. Any standard set should include what must be done, who must do it, and by when must it be done. 

Standards will entail what the system will comprise of, who will be involved, what infrastructure will be needed, what the reporting expectations are, etc. Setting standards of measurement establishes what must be done concerning all aspects of the near miss incident system. 

To define the methodology for reporting and investigating noninjury (loss producing) accidents and near misses so that the immediate, and basic (root) causes of the events are identified and recommendations to prevent a recurrence are proposed and implemented. 

Applicable legal references and Company Safety Element 4.2 Near Miss/ Accident Investigation. 

Accident An undesired event that causes harm (injury or ill health) to people, damage to property, or loss to the process (production and/or business interruption). This includes fires, as there is a loss. 

---

A series of clinical outcome reports have demonstrated that measures of PD solute removal correlate with patient status and outcome. In particular, a multicenter prospective cohort study of 680 incident CAPD patients [Canada-United States (CANUSA) Study] showed that a decrease of 0.1 in weekly urea clearance (defined by Kt/V ,ea) was associated with a 5% increase in the relative risk of death. Similarly a decrease of 5L/wk/1.73m of total creatinine clearance (Cc,) was associated with a 7% increase in the risk for death. As a consequence of these studies, national guidefines from the United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States " have set standards of dialysis adequacy in terms of small solute removal. An estimate of adequacy is performed in all patients withm 6 to 8 weeks of commencement of dialysis. Further studies should be performed at least annually. ... 

Another external response to concerns about MCOs has been an increased interest in measuring the quality of care they deliver [35]. This interest has resulted in the development of numerous quality indicators. One example, HEDIS (Health Plan Employer Data and Information Set), is a standardized set of performance indicators used to compare health plans. Developed by the National Committee for Quality Assurance, HEDIS measures allow employers and employees to evaluate different plans. Only a small number of HEDIS indicators are related to medication use, but more drug-related indicators are likely to be added in the future. The use of quality indicators likely will increase as the measures become more refined and tested. 

Because of their versatility and simplicity, TLC methods have been frequently applied to the separation and semi-quantitative determination of carotenoid pigments in synthetic mixtures and various biological matrices. The retention of pure carotenoid standards has been measured in different TLC systems. Separations have been carried out on silica plates using three mobile phases (1) petroleum ether-acetone, 6 4 v/v (2) petroleum ether-tert-butanol 8 2 v/v, and (3) methanol-benzene-ethyl acetate 5 75 20 v/v. Carotenoids were dissolved in benzene and applied to the plates. Developments were performed in presaturated normal chambers. The chemical structure and the Rv values of the analytes measured in the three mobile phases are listed in Table 2.1. It was concluded from the retention data that mobile phase 3 is the most suitable for the separation of this set of carotenoids [13],... 

A single CV as described gives n predictions. For many data sets in chemistry n is too small for a visualization of the error distribution. Furthermore, the obtained performance measure may heavily depend on the split of the objects into segments. It is therefore recommended to repeat the CV with different random splits into segments (repeated CV), and to summarize the results. Knowing the variability of MSEcv at different levels of model complexities also allows a better estimation of the optimum model complexity, see one standard error rule in Section 4.2.2 (Hastie et al. 2001). 

Model performance is now receiving critical attention because of the need for cost-effective control measures. Standard statistical performance descriptors can sometimes mislead a prospective user therefore, more specialized tests are being devised. Various model types are being compared for a specified set of initial and boundary conditions. It is apparent from these studies that added fidelity is purchased at the expense of added complexity of a logical structure that must represent the controlling phenomenology. 

Monitoring the MMA/DMAAm reaction is challenging becanse both monomers have very similar NIR spectra, and because other interfering snbstances are present in the reaction mixtnre. The anthors prepared calibration samples gravimetrically and made the NIR measurements at reaction temperatnres. The calibration sets consisted of only five or six samples, which is considerably fewer than standard recommendations for NIR chemometric model development. The final models for MMA and DMAAm were validated with an internal validation set as well as an external reaction validation. The performance of the models is summarized in Table 15.6. This table inclndes a measurement of the standard deviation of an external GC method... 

The magnitude of the uncertainty associated with a measurement should always be evaluated even if method development is able to generate the best, error-free standard curve possible in order to obtain the best, error-free concentration values for the unknown. Precision and accuracy values define the compromise between the demand for certainty in reported results and the inherent uncertainty in bioanalytical measurement. Precision and Accuracy are the most important parameters used to set the performance standards of bioanalytical methods. They define if the zone of uncertainty connected with the data produced by the method is or is not acceptable for the specific task [13,21]. 

The terms calibration and performance verification are very often used interchangeably. Calibration involves measuring and adjusting the instrument response using known standards. Performance verification verifies the operation and performance characteristics of an instrument against a predetermined set of requirements. Calibration is a part of performance verification. 

The measurement of set is a very effective quality control test as it is relatively simple and the results are sensitive to state of cure. However, because of the widespread use of set measurements as an indication of seal performance, it is worth pointing out that the usual short term set measurements do not necessarily correlate well with long term performance27,28 If set is to be used as a measure of performance, it is necessary to largely disregard the arbitrary conditions specified in standard methods and test under conditions relevant to service which may, for... 

---