Safety Management in Operations and Production

The safety of the plant assets is mainly influenced by the safety of the individual system components and their interaction with each other, including the necessary organizational system and the human factor. Research findings on safety reveal that the human factor plays a funda-mental role in an organizations' safety performance. Nowadays, the human factor is considered to contribute to accidents occurring by over 80 %, due to the high reliability of electronic and mechanical components and the new role of human operators in complex systems. Employees are the last barrier against risks, and their behavior is critical for avoiding both material and personal losses. However, unsafe worker behavior is fre-quently the result of latent failures in the organization and management systems that predispose workers to act unsafely. Not only heavy accidents, also near misses disrupt the workflow in industrial processes and generate substantial economic losses. Moreover, repeated disruptions are identified as precur-sors or warning signs of accidents. Because of the possibility of major accidents occurring, near misses should be treated as a serious warning that a significant accident could occur.