As I immersed myself in the environment of logistics and product assembly lines, I discovered a notion that is not formulated explicitly, but is often acted upon. This notion is that efficiency in production lines is the ultimate goal of a manufacturing company. Companies are struggling with aggressive and competitive environments in which cost and productivity are fundamental variables. As a result, pressures are great to place more priority on reducing costs than on preventing risks.
Since coping with budget limitations is inevitable, safety professionals are now in the position of developing new strategies to convince companies of visualizing safety as an investment factor rather than as an expense. The challenge facing us all consists on how to move beyond misperceptions about accident causation to tools and models that help us understand human complexity, design better operating policies, and thus, improve forecasting. I plan to do this through applying “Systems Thinking” and “Dynamic Modeling” to safety, which are methods grounded in mathematics and statistics that enhance learning in complex systems including the interaction between humans, money, machines, and policies.
