Supply Chain Management

Safety has to be ingrained in culture of a company and some like the Oil Companies spend billions of dollars to make safety as a matter of habit. For a novice who has gone through the training et al it may take some time to get safety in his blood . He has to rely on the operating procedures, job tasks and his supervisor's oversight. Here is where a good Enterprise Asset Management system can help a bit. It ensures that all the operating procedures are available when executing a planned work order.

Just before an equipment is commissioned, experts usually provide all the operating and maintaining procedures with built in safety procedures. Another important document sets are the 'Lock-out' and 'Tag-out' procedure sequences that are used to isolate energy systems. Using these in jobplans and deciding preventive maintenance schedules in the asset management system will make a things a lot easy when these experts leave.

However for some unplanned work there are no preset working instructions available. The asset management system should then, in addition to these lock-out tag-out steps, provide for an energy view in the form of either hierarchical or network system. These inputs provide important insight in how the energy flows through the system and help in deciding how and which systems should be locked and tagged out to enable a safe working environment. Links to the P&ID documents or any animated assembly movies are valuable. Did I say animated movies? That's another blog…..

Another important feature an asset management should have is the knowledge of 'hot work' and 'cold work'. When a planner plans for any work in a particular area he has to ensure that there are no two 'hot work' happening in the vicinity at the same time.

All said there is no denying the safety is a attitude. It’s a choice we all make whether to take that next call when driving our car …it’s a choice we make for folks waiting at home and those may not be just ours. Is that so difficult?