Introduction to Lean, Green and Safety Opportunities

This is an exciting time in risk assessment.  Risk assessment can be applied for benefit, not just adding more time, effort and safety devices.  There are sunshine and flowers to the effort and not only gloom and doom.  Whether machinery uptime, process throughput, new ideas for features, patentable innovations, or simply documenting that a company makes good products with acceptable risk, ample opportunities abound to apply the process and derive improvements.  The opportunities abound because risk assessment works.  

Foreseeable Misuse

Does misuse need to be included in a risk assessment? Yes and No. What does not need to be included is intentional abuse or deliberate misuse of the machine, equipment or product. If a reasonably foreseeable misuse is anticipated, it should be included in the risk assessment, though this does not mean any risk reduction measures are required or will be taken. In some instances a team may agree that although they can foresee misuse, no additional risk reduction measures are required. In other occasions the team may conclude that additional risk reduction measures are necessary to prevent misuse.

 

The Good Faith Application of Risk Reduction

One framework for acceptable risk can uses the principle described as "The good faith application of the hierarchy of controls" (Taubitz, personal communication, 2003). This framework recognizes that resources are not unlimited, and that decisions about risk reduction measures and acceptable risk must be made within this constraint.

Developing Warning and Safety Labels Using Risk Assessment

Product safety labels are used in a wide variety of applications including consumer products, industrial machinery, commercial equipment, etc. The purpose of a product safety label is to alert persons to a hazard and/or how to avoid the hazard. An example of what a label could read is "Danger: Hazardous voltage. Follow lockout procedure before servicing."

 

Harmonizing the Risk Assessment Process

 

The word "harmonizing" is used to describe the process of bringing two or more documents into accord or agreement. A typical application can be found where two or more countries have individual standards that apply to one product, machine or component. Representatives from the countries form a committee to work out the differences and create one standard that then applies in both countries. Harmonization does not require that the resulting standards be identical. Although the individual country standards may still exist, the differences remain minor. The harmonization process allows for local control for individual countries, yet provides typically common standards for industry.

 

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