CERM® Risk Insights

Five Technology Trends in Manufacturing

Guest Post by Daniel Burrus (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

Corporations that create in this world facilitate so many integral pieces to contemporary life by way of manufacturing. Manufacturing is quite literally a backbone to so many other industries, generating components for medical devices, automobiles, electronics, and machinery that keeps everything progressing forward. All of these components frequently need to be replaced, or more often upgraded thanks to new innovations that create new capabilities and in turn create new needs.

In addition, global supply chain shortages are driving a new wave of nearshoring to put manufacturing closer to customer locations. New manufacturing plants will utilize the latest technologies in an effort to increase productivity and competitive advantage. Due to the fact that technology-driven exponential change affects everything, manufacturing businesses must always keep up.

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by Greg Hutchins 2 Comments

Auditing Safety Management Systems

Guest Post by Bill Pomfret (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

In any given PSM audit, the auditors will usually face one or more situations that represent a dilemma because the situation has not happened before, or no thought has been given on how to resolve it. These dilemmas usually require the individual auditor and/or the audit team leader resolve the situation in the field. These “on the fly” resolutions require both astute judgment and practical solutions that fit not only the governing regulations or company/facility standards for PSM, but also how those mandatory requirements should be interpreted and applied to the specific design, operations, and PSM program of the facility being audited.

The PSM audit dilemmas described in this paper are based on the experiences of seasoned auditors during actual PSM audits. Several of them are PSM adaptations of those published by Safety Projects International Inc., et al in 5 Star Health & Safety Management System™ Health and Safety Audits. In general, there are no absolute right or wrong answers to solving these dilemmas, although in some cases a resolution might seem obvious.

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by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

How to Create a Positive Risk Culture

Guest Post by Patrick Ow (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

As the world begins to unevenly emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, people’s re-evaluation of their lives and work means employee engagement has been replaced by employee experience.

Employee experience is about the critical need for organisations to help people do and be their best. It is shaped by:

The work we do.
The teams we work in.
Our direct managers and how they coach and support us.
Our health and wellbeing.
The digital, physical, and cultural workplace.
How we grow and develop.
How much do we trust the organisation.

Even before the pandemic, the work environment was already challenging. Many studies have shown that people felt overwhelmed. They had little time to concentrate, to spend with their families, and there was no time to learn something new.

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by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

Is Detailed Design Anti-Agile?

Guest Post by Howard M. Wiener (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

In the Beginning . . .

In days of yore, systems development projects were front ended with laborious requirements engineering and design tasks. This made sense then because development was labor-intensive, time-consuming and expensive. Changes to the scope or design of a solution mid-development increased the likelihood of errors and incremental time and expense. In recognition of this, traditional Waterfall project management was applied, which created impediments to modifying the product definition once its development had begun. Changes were strenuously resisted.

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by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

Roadblocks on the Way to Leadership

Guest Post by Bill Pomfret (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

Black Lives Matter is a slogan that we see at major sporting events, and on social media, however it is a fact that female managers of color are five times more likely (21%) than their white female counterparts (4%) to say they have quit a job after being overlooked for a new leadership opportunity at work.

While it’s not really news that women and especially women of color are more likely to encounter roadblocks in the journey to a leadership role, it’s very disconcerting to how it’s affecting not just the women, but the companies that are losing out on this talent.

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by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

Virtual Decisions: Art and Reality of Indecision

Guest Post by Malcolm Peart (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

“Any decision is better than No Decision” goes the Law of Decision making. However, sitting on the fence, humming and hawing, chewing the cud, weighing every option, exploring every avenue and leaving no stone unturned can, and often does, eventually amount to, at the end of the day, and in its cold light, without beating about the bush, or wasting any more time…indecision.

Indecision, at least for those affected, leads to a number of things including frustration, demotivation, and anger. These feelings are not felt by those who dwell in indecision as they are blissfully unaware and are ignorantly oblivious as to the adverse effects of their procrastination. They are also incognizant as to their responsibility for wasting everybody’s precious time as well as being bewilderingly ignorant that a definitive decision to do nothing may allow for some productive work elsewhere. But they would rather keep people on tenterhooks and in a state of limbo and avoid any gainful and concurrent activity. Productivity for them is of no consequence…people can always catch up later…or can they?!

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by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

Why Agile Software Often Fails and What to Do About It

Guest Post by Howard M. Wiener (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

In the previous articles in this series, we discussed the role that agile digital delivery capabilities plays in your company’s competitiveness and why rapid delivery is so important. In this article, we will look at the many reasons that Agile adoptions frequently fail to deliver what companies expect and suggest some things that you should do to address them.

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by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

Safety is Integral to Engineering Education

Guest Post by Bill Pomfret (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

All this knowledge, passed on for our Engineers, is of little use unless it reaches the right people. The individuals and institutions which educate the safety engineers and who will be responsible for the design and operation of plants handling hazardous materials have a duty to make their students aware of the hazards and at least to make a start in gaining competence in handling them.

As elsewhere in engineering, computers are in wide-spread use in the design of process plants, where computer aided design (CAD) covers physical properties, flow sheeting, piping and instrument diagrams, unit operations and plant layout. There is increasing use of computers for failure data retrieval and analysis, reliability and availability studies, fault tree analysis and consequence modelling, while more elusive safety expertise is being captured by computer-based expert systems.

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by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

Great Leaders Focus on the Why, Not the How of Risk Management

Guest Post by Patrick Ow (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

Effective leaders provide their employees with a heartfelt portrayal of the WHY, a deep-rooted purpose, before defining the WHAT, the product or service, and then finally, the freedom on the HOW, which is the process.

First, understand the WHY of your solution. This gives you the line of thinking needed to decide HOW you can provide this solution in a way that is better than your competitors and more efficient for your customer.

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by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

Time: Friend or Foe, Risk or Opportunity?

Guest Post by Malcolm Peart (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

“Time and tide wait for no man”. King Canute demonstrated that the ebb and flow of the tide are inevitable and even a king has no control over them. Time, perhaps our most precious resource, is also no exception. Who hasn’t regretted not doing something because there wasn’t enough time, or time ran out as we wasted too much time deciding to do something and the opportunity slipped through our fingers?

On the other hand, how often do we regret having made a hurried decision and have had to live with dire consequences which, in hindsight could well have been avoided if we’d had more time or rather, made better use of the time available.

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by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

The Link Between Agile and Agility

Guest Post by Howard Wiener (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

In the previous article in this series, we discussed the difference between Agile and business agility and how Agile 2 addresses some of the omissions and failings of traditional Agile. Both Agile and Agile 2 focus on accelerating digital development; however, the benefits of any Agile approach can be obviated if it is not implemented within an agile management structure. Addressing execution issues, as Agile 2 does, will not be sufficient by itself to get you where you need to go.

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by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

Great Communications are Essential for Business Prosperity

Guest Post by Bill Pomfret (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

The last few years have proven the risk landscape is dynamic and evolving. And while an organization focuses on responding to one crisis, another is almost always lurking in the shadows—from COVID variants and severe weather to supply chain, and civil unrest and cybercrime. In fact, you could even find yourself in the dark – literally.

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by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

Five Technology Trends in Manufacturing: Are You On Board?

Guest Post by Daniel Burrus (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

Agile Values Can Significantly Improve Risk Management

Guest Post by Patrick Ow (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

The Agile Manifesto, also called the Manifesto for Agile Software Development, is a formal proclamation of four key values and 12 principles to guide an iterative and people-centric approach to software development.

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by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

Culture Still Eats Strategy for Breakfast

Guest Post by Bill Pomfret (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

It took us years to move from top-down to people-centric management, but the journey was worth it Peter Drucker once said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Throughout my career, I have spent a lot of time in the strategy room. But no matter what we decided there, until we got the organizational culture right, we were unsuccessful in executing our goals.

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