The CRM Plan

The CRM Plan is typically the first formal safety deliverable issued during a project. It fundamentally sets out the basis for the rest of the CRM activities. Note that the plan is not necessarily the same as the process. The process and SMS are agreed at an organisational level as a standard template or menu of CRM activities. The CRM Plan specifies the next level of detail - how the process will be applied to the particular product under consideration. 

An overview of the project and how the CRM activities relate to the wider project. 

A definition of the system and analytical boundaries. Reference should be made to any safety requirements which have been created. 

Which components or functionality is safety-related along with the appropriate 

Reference to any existing CRM work on which the project is building. 

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Where a variation to the process is considered, this should be formally documented in the CRM Plan for each system under assessment along with the rationale and jnstihcation for the variation. The process documentation itself could also set out any basis for omitting relevant steps. Building in process flexibility at the time of SMS development facilitates the straight-forward justification of the approach when one applies the process to a product. 

The CRM Plan - setting out the safety activities which one intends to conduct... 

The CRM Plan should state or reference the agreed intended purpose and in this way contribute to the boundary setting of the CRM analysis and safety case. As a minimum a HIT system s intended purpose should include ... 

The CRM Plan should state the intended purpose of the product, define the boundaries of the assessment, state any assumptions and summarise the overall approach for the product under examination. 

The intention to develop staged reports should be set out in the CRM Plan for the project. For example, one might choose the following schedule ... 

Is there a CRM plan in place, is the plan agreed, signed-off and being kept up to date ... 

We have already established that the undertaking of a CRM project should be conducted in a controlled and logical manner. Importantly the project should be carried out not in isolation but as an integrated component of the general product lifecycle or implementation. For these reasons wider project plans should contain explicit references to the CRM activities especially in the Project Initiation Document (PID). 

Most well-managed projects have embedded within than a series of gates or milestones. These events usually have defined inputs and outputs with explicit expectations that certain materials and decisions will have been completed by that point. The gates are included in the project plan - a document owned by the project manager. It is into these gates that the output from the CRM analysis will feed. In this way the CRM project team is tasked with producing a clear set of deliverables at specific points in the project - formally agreed material which other workstreams will consume and utilise in their own work. These dependencies are important to define at the start of a project so that if timescales are unexpectedly drawn out the impact on other stakeholders can be quickly ascertained. 

The deliverables produced during the assessment of a product should include a CRM Plan, hazard register and safety case. 

This section will nonnaUy set the scene and rationale for undertaking the CRM assessment. This serves to put the report into the context of the overall project and product lifecycle with reference to key milestones. It is often appropriate at this point to refer back to the original CRM Plan for further context setting. 

Where the outcome of an analysis is unexpected at least some consideration should be given to the possibility that the safety assessment process or its application could be flawed in some way. As part of the action plan it can be prudent to check that the issue is not a figment of the assessment methodology, especially when a CRM process is new and has not been previously tested. For example ... 

Design, during which the firm refines the value proposition and purposes supporting the CRM effort. High-level business processes critical to execution are identified, an activity that is facilitated with input from the blueprint that emanates form the core business processes identified as being critical for CRM success. A second blueprint that defines core system components is also used to define the architecture needed to implement the solutions. Business and technical requirements are mapped to select the most appropriate enabling software for the specific situation. A release plan that outlines follow-on implementation activities is created at the conclusion of this phase. 

Classify the supply chain macro processes in a firm. All supply chain processes can be classified into three macro processes based on whether they are at the customer or supplier interface or are internal to the firm. The CRM macro process consists of all processes at the interface between the firm and the customer that work to generate, receive, and track customer orders. The ISCM macro process consists of all supply chain processes that are internal to the firm and work to plan for and fulfill customer orders. The SRM macro process consists of all supply chain processes at the interface between the firm and its suppliers that work to evaluate and select suppliers and then source goods and services from them. 

The participants The range of participants should, whenever possible, be chosen in such a manner that widely different methods (based on different physical or chemical principles) can be used. The number of participants (recommended 15) should be sufficient to allow meaningful statistical processing of the results. When the laboratories feel the need for a CRM, either because the available calibrants are not comparable and a primary calibrant appears necessary for traceability, or because a reliable certified control material is needed but not available, then it is recommended that these laboratories do not plan a certification project entirely on their own, but that they involve laboratories having a background in traceability. 

Figure 7.27 shows that only a few participants indicated that they used a tuna bsh CRM for QA. Forty percent of the participants using a CRM for QA, compared to 30 percent not using a CRM, reported Hg results within 5 percent deviation from the certibed reference value. Final conclusions on the measurement performance according to the use of CRMs could be drawn if all results were corrected for recovery. Unfortunately this information was not available. It is planned to get information on recovery correction from IMEP participants in future IMEP ILCs. 

The availability of ad hoc CRMs can substantially contribute to the credibility and comparability of experimental information obtained in Antarctica. The global investment made in this remote continent in terms of human and financial resources, and the crucial role played by Antarctic studies in the interpretation of phenomena on a planetary scale do demand that no questionable data be generated or circulated. It would be thus desirable that other countries undertake similar programmes and stimulate the major producers of CRMs to support and participate in such initiatives. International planning and coordination in this context will definitely provide additional evidence of Antarctica as being as a land of peace and science. 

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