Practical ways of improving product safety in industry

Looking at various industries it very soon becomes obvious that many safety aspects of a product usually are a result of customer or market requirements instead of an in-house based safety-oriented mindset. Producers usually behave *reactively* instead of *proactively*. It is essential to understand, that safety needs to be incorporated into a product from the very beginning of the product design. Trying to force it onto a product as an afterthought, once the product design and development have already been completed is doomed to lead to mediocre results - at best. There are a lot of pre-conditions increasing the difficulty to handle the safety of a product, e.g.: - Various divisions within one company have to meet different safety standards - One product is used in several domains - Unequal safety and domain know-how of employees in different departments - Last but not least, a poor safety culture. Safety has to be defined at the very top of a company and communicated to all employees. This paper aims to discuss the role of safety in a company and how to handle increasing safety requirements from legislation and regulation and from different markets, e.g. different standards.