A system dynamics approach in modeling organizational tradeoffs in safety management

The mining industry is still ranked highly amongst the economic sectors with the highest fatality rates. Earlier approaches to safety have attributed this to the lack of a comprehensive safety management system that employs effective safety barriers. A system theoretic approach to safety provides a better basis for looking deeper into the interaction of technical, workplace and organizational factors, their magnitude of effects, and their time characteristics. This study presents a system dynamics model of safety and production that looks deeper into their organizational tradeoffs. A safety model integrates aspects of safety culture, worker motivation, and human reliability in an effort to examine how risk evolves over time. Additional models of task management and human resources are developed to trace the interactions between safety and production as well as to examine alternative job designs that can reduce risk. The simulation model has been tested for a number of step to increase production demands and the impact on safety over the course of 5 years. HIGHLIGHTS A methodology has been developed for modeling safety management based on system dynamics. The system dynamics model integrates safety with other organizational processes, such as production and human resources management. System dynamics allow explicit modeling of decision tradeoffs between organizational processes. Emphasis has been given on the evolution of risk over a large period of time where hidden problems may materialize later in the future.