System Safety An Integral Part of the Overall Organization

SYSTEM SAFETY AN INTEGRAL PART OF THE OVERALL ORGANIZATION 

The role of the occupational or industrial safety and health organization in the system safety process has Ijcen established as an essential element since both can be interpreted as self-serving to a great extent. That is to say, the industtial safety program could be drastically improved by incorporating the process of system safety whenever possible and, conversely, a well-rounded system safety effort would not be complete without adequate consideration of the industrial safety program. 

It cannot be overemphasized that the principle elements of a sound industrial safety program, with its primary purpose of OSHA compliance, work hazard reduction, assurance of employee/job safety and health, and the evaluation of jobs or tasks (through the JSA or other comparable method), can, in most cases, be achieved through application of the system safety process. The connection between the two programs while not entirely obvious is quite understandable, as described above. Perhaps the most important thing to remember here is that the industrial or occupational safety and health professional can utilize the time-proven techniques of hazard reduction and system safety analysis to accomplish the desired goal of both programs  

Maximum safety in the performance of a task or function with minimum risk of hazard exposure and minimum cost. 

Reliability, Maintainability, and Quality Control. Inclusion of these organizations in the system safety process, from concept through disposal, will aid in the identification of safety-critical components for reliability analysis. A failure mode(s) and effect(s) analysis (FMEA), as well as other common reliability models, can be used to identify critical and noncritical failure points. The quality assurance element can be extremely usefid in the overall system safety process. Quality engineers should participate in the inspection of safety-critical components, serve on certification boards, audit any corrective-action requirements, and identify any safety impacts associated with implementation of such requirements. 

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