I have been harping on the less amount of time plant managers are spending today visiting the plant and talking to the operators. Today Process Safety is being devoured by technology that is being pushed by vendors - including advanced process control, high funda instruments, SIL rated loops, software that promises just about to do anything including HAZOP studies, RCA's etc.., dashboards for monitoring process safety performance etc... While technology can be an enabler, ultimately, we need to realize one thing - there is no substitute for a plant manager to do his daily rounds and talk to operators.Today's plant manager has become a technology slave - be it answering e-mails from his laptop to checking his blackberry for bad news!
I was happy to read that in one major multinational in UK, the plant managers are compulsorily made "free" for the first three hours of their day so that they visit the plant, do a plant round and talk to operators and engineers. If you practice this, most of the process safety issues will be resolved.
Contribute to the surviving victims of Bhopal by buying my book "Practical Process Safety Management"
I was happy to read that in one major multinational in UK, the plant managers are compulsorily made "free" for the first three hours of their day so that they visit the plant, do a plant round and talk to operators and engineers. If you practice this, most of the process safety issues will be resolved.
Contribute to the surviving victims of Bhopal by buying my book "Practical Process Safety Management"
Fully agree with the idea. In our plant too we encourage and ensure the plant heads to spend first 3-4 hrs in the plant - bhasker
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