Management Discipline: Defining a Process Safety Strategy

We often associate operational discipline with conduct of operations and define discipline as the tools to achieve repeatable results. While discipline in operations is primarily focused on the operator, engineers, and management contribute to the success in achieving consistent results. A Plan-Do-Check-Act model, or Deming Cycle, can be used to represent the relationship among operational, engineering, and management disciplines. The management discipline part of the cycle involves making decisions (act) based on the output of the operations, and planning for success. This article describes a modified strategic business analysis (SBA) planning tool that managers can apply to process safety in order to achieve a desired vision and objective. Too often we are reactive to incidents and create activity lists from year to year in order to achieve objectives and goals. The process safety SBA tool is a structured approach of data analysis. It helps us to understand the company's internal and external environment in order to set strategic alternatives that will bring a company from its present state to the desired future state. By planning for and following a strategy, consistency in operations is achieved and repeatable results can be obtained. (c) 2013 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process Saf Prog 33: 162-165, 2014