Digitalization is a major trend in industry and everyone is seeking solutions to advance their company into industry 4.0. But what does this really mean? Learning from history and past major trends, finding solutions that add real, measurable value and have a meaningful impact is key. Otherwise, you risk drowning in initiatives that don’t support the core drivers of your business and losing your corporate focus along with the appetite for new ideas.
Considering the changes that are happening in our world and in our workforce, digitalization is an important opportunity to capitalize on. As we see the generational transition in our workforce, many of the most experienced professionals are ‘aging out’ into retirement and being replaced by a younger generation that works and thinks very differently. This will only continue, as soon enough there won’t be an employee in your head count who hasn’t grown up with a cell phone in their hands!
In the area of process safety management (PSM) which is closely tied with operational excellence, there is much room for innovation. Many practices in PSM have not changed much in decades and the opportunity to apply new technologies, new ways of thinking are plentiful. Throughout all industries, we continue to see major incidents that could be prevented by strong PSM practices. It is clear that the ‘old way’ is not driving the desired results.
“There are no dreams too large, no innovation unimaginable and no frontiers beyond our reach.”
– John S Herrington
There are so many tools – from virtual reality and augmented reality, to big data approaches – that can be leveraged. So much has been documented in process safety over the last several decades that there is a massive volume of data to work with.
From masses of incident investigation data to audits and assessments, it is staggering how much knowledge is captured in those documents. Looking at PHA data alone, in the USA there have been 6 cycles of PHA (every 5 years for almost 35 years). Just think of all the value trapped in those piles of documents that can equip and empower a new generation to stand on the shoulders of those who came before them to do better.
What Questions Should You Ask About How Digitalization Can Refresh Your PSM Programs?
- How much knowledge is lost every time we lose a senior employee to retirement or general attrition?
- What would excite and engage the new generation of our workforce?
- How are others using data to improve their safety performance?
- What can we measure in our data to track KPIs and see our performance
Risk Management is Serious Business
Suncor Energy, a thought leader in oil and energy and a long-time client of Risk Alive® Analytics, had this to say in some excerpts from their 2019 sustainability report on work with reliability and process safety:
“Suncor is implementing advanced analytics to improve personal and process safety, asset reliability, operations optimization and environmental performance. Representing a broad range of solutions, advanced analytics allows for sophisticated data mining that produces deeper insights into patterns and trends across our assets and workforce.
An example of this work is the application of analytics of process hazards analyses to support the focus on quality and prioritization of improvement opportunities. As a result, we can make faster, more proactive decisions and system changes that can prevent incidents. We expect this increased ability to make evidence-based predictions should improve reliability, reduce maintenance costs and optimize facility throughput.”
And let us know: are you digitalizing your risk data? How do you think digitalization could help your organization?
Drop a comment below or connect with us to get started using Risk Alive® Analytics to help you and your team learn more to work safer with digitalized risk data.
