Tag Archive : Return-to-Work

The world has changed, very suddenly. How do we handle it?

For many of us it’s asking a lot for us to join the effort to help subdue the coronavirus. Not just medical professionals, or first responders or supply chain specialists in the transportation of groceries — every retailer, restaurant owner, baker, manufacturer, hair stylist, farmer, and undertaker also needs to put in extra effort for it to be successful as well.

You’re probably saying to yourself “I didn’t sign up for this when I started this business (or, when I took this job)”. “How do I handle something so very foreign to what we normally do around here?“

This guide will help you. It’s designed to bring you peace of mind. In return however you’ll have to supply, and work with, more details than you’ve ever encountered before.

Always keep one thing in mind: Safety isn’t simply filling out a form, or checking a few boxes. Safety is buried in those details, every last one of them. So, it’s very important to understand exactly where things are going well, and where they’re not, before filling out the form or checking the boxes. The very smallest detail, if it’s not considered correctly, could hurt someone; and it often does.

We’re committed to helping sort out the details, finding the holes, making sure that you don’t miss any (not one), creating your plan for closing them, executing it successfully, publishing a COVID-19 Preparedness and Response Plan document if required, and oh yes, filling out and submitting the forms.

COVID-19 Preparedness and Response Planning is being seen as critical by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and many state governments, prior to businesses and organizations beginning a Return-to-Work transition. Many third-party templates are being circulated as starting points for formal plans detailing this work.

Unfortunately most of them are lacking in the fundamental technical details of safety. As a consequence firms that use them as-is are taking on additional risk, technical, financial and legal.

Our introductory webinars provide a detailed overview of the technical foundations of safety analysis and safety solutions, as they apply to COVID-19 Return-to-Work. Consider attending one in the near future to bolster your confidence in your plan and the planning process that created it. And as always, consult your attorney for additional details on the legal aspects of COVID-19 Preparedness and Response Plans and Planning.

See our Webinars page for related upcoming events: https://intelligentdynamics.com/upcoming-webinars/.

How can we apply a safety standard intended for the development of electronics and control systems on automobiles to the creation of safety solutions that will ensure that customers, associates and personnel can return to work safely?

Here’s how:

Aspect of ISO-26262ISO-26262 as normally employedISO-26262 as applied to COVID-19 Back-to-Work
Quality Control as a foundationCommitment to Total Quality Management (TQM) ensures that products and systems are consistent across all production and deliver predictable, identical performance.Predictable, identical performance by customers, associates and personnel is required to ensure safety (no holes, omissions, or oversights) as they go about their business.
Platform upon which the safety solution is built (interfaces)Applies to hardware used in safety-critical systems within automobilesThink of facilities, parking lots, rest rooms, cafeterias, coffee stations, equipment, workstations and desks as ‘infrastructure and interface hardware’.
Platform upon which the safety solution is built (control)Applies to hardware used in safety-critical systems within automobilesThink of people as the ‘control hardware’ that execute the instructions ensuring safety (the ‘software’, see below).
Instructions for creating and maintaining safetyApplies to software running on the hardware used in safety-critical systems within automobilesThink of the instructions that customers, associates and personnel must follow to ensure safety as ‘software’. (Remember that all software is simply a set of instructions. Thus instructions given to people for successfully avoiding COVID-19 infection are merely another form of ‘software’.)

Because a pandemic is not a common occurrence there are no existing international standards for creating plans, approaches and solutions that ensure the safety of customers, associates and personnel as they return to work. Thus we turn to those that do exist, looking for direction.

International standard ISO-26262, covering automotive functional safety, and its fellow industry-specific standards for functional safety are all largely derived from generic functional safety standard IEC 61508. As a result they share a common core consisting of:

  • Conducting a Hazard Analysis and Risk Assessment (HARA)
  • Generation of Safety Goals for the required solution
  • Elicitation of Safety Requirements
  • Design of a safety solution to delivery these requirements and ensure that the Safety Goals are never violated.
  • Evaluation of the relative success of several possible solutions in meeting the requirements when compared to each other and other alternatives.
  • Verification that the final chosen solution meets its intended requirements.
  • Validation to ensure that situation into which the final chosen solution is delivered is covered completely and successfully addressed by the solution.
  • Assessing the solution to confirm that it delivers the intended safety.

We’ve elected to use the automotive standard because it’s the most detailed and comprehensive of the set, has successfully generated the most successful solutions because of the size of the automotive business, and has the most experience behind it, with tens of millions of vehicles developed under it and safely travelling the roads.

ISO-26262 also features one additional important step that the others do not:

  • Auditing the solution to confirm that the process of creating it was executed correctly.

All of these steps, as captured within ISO-26262, are critical to the delivery of safe COVID-19 Back-to-Work plans, approaches, and solutions.

In the current situation with COVID-19 federal and regional governments have imposed a number of generic safety requirements, but have provided no specific details for organizations attempting to implement them. This leaves most people responsible for implementation bewildered as to how to make it happen where it counts, in the restaurant, the factory, the warehouse, the school, the hair salon, etc.

Safety Analysis fills the gap. Much work that is currently not well defined because of this uncertainty needs to take place at the level of the facility, by people who have first-hand knowledge, in detail, of:

  • The facility itself, i.e. its layout, including the position of everything inside, rooms, equipment, storage tanks, supplies, etc.
  • The customers, associates and personnel who will be within it when work resumes.
  • The means of getting them, supplies, and finished goods in and out of the facility, as well as through it, e.g. parking lots, doorways, hallways and corridors, etc.
  • The nature of the work that will take place there.
  • The interaction that typically takes place between customers, associates and other personnel as that work is conducted.

Of paramount importance in all of this is the idea that things, and often people too (we call them customers, clients, patients, etc.), get processed as work is conducted. Raw materials enter a plant and are refined, parts are joined into assemblies, whole chickens are broken down into portions, cars are serviced, and customers come into a shop and are accommodated,. Work flows as these things take place. A chain of people, usually with machines mixed in among them, each add a little more value what traverses the flow as they execute their work. Out of the end comes a product or service that ideally meets its needs perfectly.

Safety Engineering is the process of capturing and studying this flow of work, and generating a way in which to make it work safely, by generating a plan for ensuring that it never, ever hurts anyone, either as they execute the process, or use the product or service that comes out the end.

This plan captures the low-level details that are missing in the directions from above. It is important that, as they are filled in, they must mesh fully with those requirements put forth by the authorities.

Think of the result as a large ‘tree’, with many branches, each of which describes how to achieve safety in a greater level of detail. To the implementer this tree is oriented upside-down with its trunk pointed upward. In Safety Analysis we capture safety requirements in such trees, however we call them by the fancy name ‘requirements hierarchies’. Each high-level safety requirement

Careful management of Safety Requirements is important. It is the most detailed and benefits greatly when persnickety people conduct it. Why is this? The devil is in the details. Once a complete set of safety requirements is in hand it is imperative that every last one be met — missing even the smallest detail means that someone will get hurt, if not immediately then eventually.

Webinars

We offer Webinars frequently. See our upcoming schedule at https://intelligentdynamics.com/upcoming-webinars/.

On-Site (Customized or Standard)

On-Site training is our most popular training service. Sessions are held on-site at your facility, or can be moved off-site for increased separation from your busy work environment if you choose. A minimum of six attendees are required. Sessions involving more than about 20 people make it difficult for attendees to receive individualized attention when it’s necessary.

Customization is available, and is popular because it can include real-world examples from your business, allowing trainees to use their existing technical projects and issues to feed their training experience. Most return to work with immediate solutions to current technical challenges in hand and ready-to-implement.

Public Offerings

Public training mirrors our customized offerings, but features standardized industry examples, primarily to keep your proprietary intellectual property from being discussed, and therefore disclosed, to any potential competitor who may be attending the same session. Questions specific to your proprietary situation can be handled, and are welcomed, but we will only do so outside the public classroom setting.

Many concerns strike fear in the hearts of those responsible for the safety of personnel returning to work, and associates and customers as well, as COVID-19 stay at home orders are lifted.

Too much of what has been suggested, by media, pundits or experts; or required, by the government, seems insufficient to calm those fears, largely because it’s lacking in many, many details.

At Intelligent Dynamics our expertise is in safety, including safety of products, safety in the delivery of services, and most importantly and plainly, safety in the process of doing your job. We specialize in the details.

It is a critical responsibility for managers and executives, and a task requiring the help of professionals, because of the magnitude of the implications of falling short. We can help you deliver.

With our help even novices can be quite successful, and feel fully confident in doing so, with the proper technical knowledge and support behind them.

We’ll provide the assistance you’ll need to succeed, starting with these important topics:

  • At-Risk Activities for personnel
  • The importance of quality systems when safety is on the line
  • Risk Management
  • Facilities Analysis
  • Ensuring Safe Distancing
  • Proper Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)
  • Adapting Cleanroom Techniques and Technologies
  • Testing of Personnel
  • Analysis of existing processes
  • Process Mapping
  • Hazard Analysis and Risk Assessment (HARA)
  • Design of Safety Systems and Processes
  • Failure Mode Effects Analysis (FMEA)
  • Assessment of the likelihood of success for any given approach
  • Documentation

Welcome to our world. We’re here to make sure that you navigate Back-to-Work safely, and successfully.

Stay safe!