The Values-Based Safety Process

Terry E. McSween. 2011. The values-based safety process improving your safety. Beijing Electronics industry Press. 

Mcsween, T.E. The Values-Based Safety Process Improving Your Safety Culture with a Behavioral Approach. New York Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1995. 

We call our approach to behavioral safety the values-based safety process. As you will design a process that meets the needs of your organization, your team may want to find a name that fits your organization s new process. Companies have called their safety improvement efforts the employee safety process (ESP), the safe acts process, the positive safety process, the continuous incident prevention process, and a variety of others. (See the discussion on the contest to name the behavioral safety process in Chapter 23 for suggestions on involving employees in selecting a name.)... 

When the first edition of Values-Based Safety Process was written in 1993, my goal was to illustrate a proven approach to applying behavioral techniques to improve safety in the workplace. Since that time the field and interest in behavioral safety have greatly expanded, as has our experience. With that in mind, I set out with three primary objectives for the second edition bring the methodology and terminology into alignment with current practice, address a variety of special topics, and provide case studies that more adequately represent current practices and application. 

Suggestion 5 Don t create a bureaucracy around the data. The value of this process is in getting everyone to pay attention to on-the-job safety, and creating a paper storm will hinder any process. Build informal systems of accountability based on the observable parts of the system. Do not create an elaborate system of paper... 

To assist in improving the safety process, we first conducted a safety assessment as detailed in this book. A preestablished company safety team became the design team. Most of its 15 members were hourly workers. Quality Safety Edge consultants conducted a three-day workshop on values-based safety and then facilitated four two-day meetings to design a safety process that included the following components ... 

In order to reflect these lead times, the concept of a timestamp is introduced. Timestamp is used in computer science documenting the system time when a certain event or transaction occurs e.g. for logging events (N.N. 2007). In the context of future inventory value planning, the time-stamp marks the period, when the first raw material has reached a certain stage in the value chain network included into a specific product. In the example illustrated in fig. 57, the raw material is processed in the same period to be converted into product 1. Therefore, all four value chain steps indexed from one to four occur in the same period and have the same time-stamp one. Conversion into product 2, however, requires additional time caused by production lead times, safety inventory and/or transportation time, that the steps indexed with five and six have a time stamp of two. The timestamp reflects that the inventory value of product 2 is not based on the raw material costs from the same period but based on the raw material costs from the previous period in order to reflect the lead time. Consequently, value chain indices and timestamps are defined for all steps and can cover multiple periods reflecting that raw materials in a global complex multi-stage value chain network can take several months, until they are sold as part of a finished product to the market. 

Some companies make use of safety indices as a tool for assessing the relative risk of a new process or plant. The most widely used safety index is the Dow Eire and Explosion Index, developed by the Dow Chemical Company and published by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (Dow, 1994) (see www.aiche.org). A numerical fire and explosion index (F El) is calculated, based on the nature of the process and the properties of the process materials. The larger the value of the F El, the more hazardous the process see Table 9.6. 

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