The Link between Reliability and Safety with Ron Moore

The link between reliability and safety cannot be overstated, especially since injuries to the technicians and engineers are very common mostly in manufacturing industries. These workplace injuries can have a severe impact on the organizational resources. Notwithstanding, there are still organizations that are not sold to the idea of creating a reliable plant. These organizations consider reliability as just a way to maintain the machines. What they fail to understand is that safety can only be achieved through reliability.

When you do predictive maintenance, defect elimination is easier and the injury rate goes down. A reliable plant saves you money and helps you keep the environment in the facilities safer and friendlier for the employees. It only makes sense that the reliability of a plant is related to the safety of the workers. When you have Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), your plant is more reliable and that’s why there are fewer injuries in the facility. Same goes for the PdM, Reactive maintenance, and all the other routine procedures that ensure the safety of the staff within a plant.

Deriving reliability for everyone’s safety, eliminating defects, and reducing maintenance cost is not just a program that just dies with the passage of time. When you do things right and make them consistent across the whole organization, it becomes a culture. That culture then only results in improvement of procedures and processes. When an organization uses reliability to not only reduce cost and increase production but provide safety and quality, they achieve long-term results. An organization cannot implement this change in the culture without good leadership and organizational alignment. Everyone needs to understand the correlation between reliability and safety.

Only then, they will have the common goals and strive towards achieving them. The top management should be able to act on the safety issues as well through reliability programs. For them to be involved and support the cause, they should be presented a strong business case. That business case should be detailed and with proven results. If the management sees a significant reduction in defects and injuries, they would surely heed to the recommendation by their leading planners and engineers. Then it would be their responsibility to provide a safer and reliable workplace for everyone.

It’s not just the management who is responsible for safety measures, everyone should take their individual responsibilities to make the environment safe for everyone. They should report unsafe practices, help avoid injuries, and contribute to defect elimination. The reliability is not just the function of maintenance. It starts with production and manufacturing departments. The maintenance staff is there to support them in implementing those necessary measures, compliance steps, and other maintenance functions. Every person in the facility should be trained in standards procedures, policies, and planned PMs. That is the only way to help everyone stay safe, promote good culture, improve business processes with time.

Recommended Reading:

• Episode 99: Reliability with Ron Moore

Eruditio Links:

• Eruditio
• HP Reliability
• A Smarter Way of Preventative Maintenance Free eBook
• inspired Blended Learning (iBL®)
• James Kovacevic’s LinkedIn

Ron Moore Links:

• Phone: 865-765-7607
• Email: ronsrmgp@aol.com
• SIRF Roundtables
• Reliable Manufacturing
• Recommended Readings:
  • A reliable plant is a safe plant – and a cost-effective plant
  • A Reliable Plant – Good for Personal and Process Safety
  • Operational Excellence: Minimizing Risks – Of Injury, Of Lost Profits, Of Environmental Hazards, While Assuring World Class Performance
• Books by Ron Moore
  • Making Common Sense Common Practice, Fourth Edition: Models for Operational Excellence by Ron Moore
  • What Tool? When? A Management Guide for Selecting the Right Improvement Tools by Ron Moore

130 – The Link between Reliability and Safety with Ron MooreJames Kovacevic

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