Discuss about the Engineering Innovation and Ethics Industries.
The increase in automation, complex mechanism, electrification and introduction of more vertical structures in industries increased frequency and impact of accidents. Accident is an unexpected occurrence which causes injury to person and become unfit to resume duties (YourArticleLibrary, 2016). As per “Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)” all companies having employee strength of 10 or more needs to report all types of injuries happening at workplaces (Hearst, 2017). Accidents may cause internal or external injuries which were early prevented by using proper personal protective equipment, but now a day many engineering techniques were developed for measuring it proactively. There are various reasons behind any accident happening at industries. Also we shall discuss in this article regarding the increase in safety standards by engineers. There are various critical industries where the prevention and pro activeness are must like in defense industry, energy industry, manufacturing industry, mining industry and Food industry. The negligence in maintaining safety standards can cause serious accidents. History has proven results of such accidents due to negligence. But at the same time it’s true that all accidents have some root causes and by finding and analyzing those engineers can avoid such incidents in future by taking proactive steps.
Minor Accident: any occupational injury like cut of finger while paper cutting, fall of small box etc. which require only first aid treatment and no other type of medical treatment (USA. United States Department of Labor, 2017). OSHA does not require employees to report minor illness, but at the same time encourages record keeping as sometimes minor can become major, suppose if somebody slips and just fall on floor, it does not even require first aid treatment, but after few days back pain may start and also lead to take leave from workplace.
Major Accident: it is an accident which can cause total or continued disability or death (dotEHS, 2017). As per OSHA, any injury which require medical treatment other than just first aid are called major accidents. It requires immediate reporting including analysis of the root cause of accident and correctness at operational level by forming a workforce to ensure the compliance has taken place at workplace. These accidents happen due to various unsafe conditions, acts and other causes at site.
The causes and impact of accidents can differ for different types of industries. But the main causes of accidents in industries are:
Poor Management: it is the weak planning of work sequences and recruitment of poor quality people which causes accidents. Sometimes companies top management are only interested in quick progress for which sometimes employees are forced to take “Shortcuts”, when they normally avoid executing the pre-start requirements and make some arrangement to achieve goals first. It happens when work is normally started before the approval to start is obtained. A good idea of workplace can be viewed by observing the housekeeping of the area (SafetyPartners, 2017). Failure to plan the work in advance or pre-plan it is also one of the factors of poor management, like “Job Safety Analysis (JSA)” before the start of any job irrespective of its complexity (ToolBoxTopics, 2017).
Human or Personal error: it is the poor communication which takes in workplace between the labor and supervisor and the ignorance of safety laws are the main reason behind this error. This happens mainly due to the presence of mind out of workplace (HAS, 2017). It may be due to willingness for going home early, stressed working day, some emergency occurred at personal life or some quarrel with other person and its disturbing the mind. So all such things may impact the human brain and mood and the accidents normally happen when we are not in full control of our mind. Accidents like “Falling from height”, can happen when somebody working in very unsafe conditions and is out of mind, “Falling object on body”, it can happen when proper safety nets are not installed and even a small object falling from height can impact much on the person on whom it falls and can even lead to death, “Collision” is a common cause of accident and in such case the objects which are being carried by the person or machine may fall on each other, “Falling in Holes” also can happen due to personal error and “Violence in workplace” also may happens due to hot arguments and poor state of mind. All these accidents may lead to major injury or even death (Hearst, 2017). Lack of obligation; and rule, ethics, and/or preparation are also few types of human or personal errors (Safety.BLR, 2011).
Technical or Machine failure: it is the accidents which are caused because of technical failure of machines used in industries. It happens due to least maintenance of machinery parts and deploying defected machineries to hire in cheap rate and save cost. This happens mainly because of the intensions of saving cost and time of buying new equipment (SimpsonMillar, 2016). Excessive noise and vibration due to less maintenance may also cause failure of machines and if some machines are carrying poisonous or inflammable items may cause fatal injury or irritation in human body. Due to which power failure may happen, broken dynamic parts may injure workmen, fire may happen, it may also explode if explosive in nature, infect the workers around if it is infectious, system leakage may also affect human health as sometimes some infectious items are carried in the system which are infectious to human health, wear and tear due to old age of equipment also it may cause failure and affect workers around (Safeopedia, 2017).
Prevention of injuries at workplaces has become a challenge for the safety professionals. Earlier prevention of occupational injury used to be mainly done by adopting procedures to save workers by providing various PPE (Personal Protective Equipment). Over the period of time, the detection devices of procedures been developed by using many scientific mechanisms such as:
Regression Method (RA): Liner and logarithmic regression are the first type of techniques which people learn and because of its usefulness it became very famous. It is a predictive technique which uses dependent and independent variable. Dependent are “targets” and independents are “predictors”. It uses historical data regarding accidents and its main cause to analyze the relationship their between cause and impact (AnalyticsVidhya, 2017).
figure shows the regression line which is the output of the analysis. There are various types of regression techniques available, but which one to use is depend on few factors like number and
types of variables which are independent and shape of line. There are various types of regression analysis like “Linear Regression” where linear relationship is there between the independent and dependent variables. “Logistic Regression” is used where probability matrix between event & its failure or events and its success arête is used, it needs to have large quantum of samples, “Polynomial regression”, “Stepwise regression”, Ride regression”, “Lasso regression” and “ElasticNet regression” are the various types of models being used in different cases.
Failure mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA): it is a simple step-by-step analysis procedure which can be used in case of any design, manufacturing or any other service failures. It is used commonly when design of any process takes place after quality functions are deployed, or an existing system is applied in new fashion, or before the development of new process, or analyzing failure causes of existing process or system (ASQ, 2017). Effect analysis results in getting the study done for understanding the consequences of the failures happened. There are various methods used by different kinds of industries. One tabular example is pasted below for
reference. As stated above, it is a step-by-step procedure, the steps are: ask the purpose of the service, then identify the ways of failure can happen for all such services, then for each case of failures identify the consequences of the failures, then determine the impact seriousness analysis of the failures, then determine the root cause analysis of the failures, then determine the rating of such failure occurrence, then do critical analysis of characteristics, calculate the RPN (Risk Priority Number) and note the recommendations and it end the task. So these steps need to be repeated every time for conducting the analysis. FEMA calculates the injury or harm can happen due to various which focus on system functions, design functions, process functions, service and software functions (NPD, 2016).
Quantitative Risk Analysis (QRA): Quantitative and Probabilistic risk analysis is used depending on different types of industries. It helps in taking risk-based decisions. It can reduce the risk level by reasonably practical level (Risktec, 2017). As QRA is so useful, sometimes it is also misused by using unrealistic models, ignoring the results, etc. these are mainly used in nuclear, petrochemical, offshore and railway industries. Various steps are involved in assessment of quantitative risk are hazard identification, determining scenarios of loss, escalations, consequences, likelihood, loss to human health, risk and finally decreasing the risk to reasonable practical level (Bell-Energy, 2017).
Accidents can be prevented by using engineering techniques. Work environment culture can be made safer by engineers by implementing better scientific approaches. There are some methods which are invented by engineers for the prevention of industrial accidents by:
Examining of well-being norms and practices are developed and educated in many engineering subjects designed for developing good practice in engineers for providing safety in most hazardous industries like chemical plant and laboratories (AICHE, 2017).
Creation of simple design in industry: safety engineers can help industry and businesses by developing some simple techniques to prevent illness, prevent injuries and other losses. Engineers will also provide legal regulatory compliances, can solve analytically and interviewing the workforce. Provide proper safety trainings for gathering adequate information (Safetybiz, 2011).
During the investigation procedure one has to see the causes of accident are because of unsafe working conditions or unsafe human errors. Hence, it is very much necessary to test few factors which cause the accidents. for example in case of an investigation with outcome after root cause analysis is the worker’s carelessness has caused the accident, but still few unanswered questions remains there. The reason behind the distraction of worker’s focus, whether the working conditions were safe, if not, then why not. Why the accident happened, was the proper PPEs not available or proper training was provided prior to start of work, so providing answers to all such queries is a big challenge for the concerned safety engineer to correct the conditions rather than simply recommending the root cause as carelessness (Canada. Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety, 2017).
which the accidents may happen are Material, Environment, Personnel, Management and Task. In Task, we need to identify that whether safe work procedures were implemented. Safe material of PPEs, safety nets was used. Safe working environment was provided to worker or not, weather condition in which accident has happened is hot, cold or wet etc. Proper safety trainings were given, procedures were explained or not, whether worker was ill or tired. Management has explained the site rules or procedures correctly. By doing such exhaustive analysis we can be rest assured about the healthy outcome of investigation which can help in implementing safer working culture.
Conclusion
We can conclude from all above discussions that safety is a foremost important factor which needs to be considered in industrial works. It can cause many devastating results due to its negligence. There are various types of injuries which can happen by different types of accidents. It’s not always necessary that minor accidents are to be neglected, because on various occasions it may further exaggerate and take the shape of major injury. Various reasons of happening accident are poor management, human error and mechanical malfunctioning and all happens normally due to human characteristics and negligence. So it should be our utmost priority to take preventive action against accidents or incidents. By taking reactive actions we cannot save the life or injury which may happen due to accident, but only decrease its impact, so it is most important to take proactive steps to minimize the accidents. By the help of studies and analysis over the period of time engineers developed many analytical techniques to prevent accidents in industries. Like QRA, FMEA are few of the techniques which can eventually reduce the risks of happening any incident or accidents to its lowest practical level. Engineers at industries can also add value to the safety management by developing various analytical techniques to calculate the presence of risk and further find their mitigation methods and implement it up to the lowest working level in the organization. They can even provide adequate trainings to the workers to increase their skill level for getting better productivity and profit for the organization.
Every organization especially which involves construction or production is recommended to employ safety engineer for implementing safer working culture at workplaces. Safety engineer shall be held responsible for the prevention of accidents by providing proper trainings to the workforce to make safer workplaces and incase of accident happens he should be competent enough to conduct a fair root cause analysis. On the basis of lessons learnt from previous accident or incident, the outcomes of analysis must again be implemented at workplaces and the cycle of achieving safer working conditions must go on during the whole project life cycle.
References
YourArticleLibrary. (2016). Industrial Accidents: Types and Causes of Accidents (explained with diagram). Retrieved March 20, 2017, from https://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/industries/industrial-accidents-types-and-causes-of-accidents-explained-with-diagram/35400/
Hearst. (2017). What Is the Difference between Major & Minor Injuries in the Workplace? Retrieved March 20, 2017, from https://smallbusiness.chron.com/difference-between-major-minor-injuries-workplace-18806.html
dotEHS. (2017). Types of Industrial Accidents. Retrieved March 20, 2017, from https://dotehs.com/index.php/types-of-industrial-accidents
USA. United States Department of Labour. (2017). Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Retrieved March 21, 2017, from https://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_id=16312&p_table=FEDERAL_REGISTER
SafetyPartners. (2017). 7 most Common causes of Workplace Accidents. Retrieved March 21, 2017, from https://www.safetypartnersltd.com/7-most-common-causes-of-workplace-accidents/#.WNCD3FV97IV
HAS. (2017). Behavior at Work and You. Retrieved March 21, 2017, from https://www.hsa.ie/eng/Workplace_Health/Accidents_and_Behaviour/
SimpsonMillar. (2016). The Most Common Accidents in the Construction Industry. Retrieved March 21, 2017, from https://www.simpsonmillar.co.uk/news/the-most-common-accidents-in-the-construction-industry-1916
Safeopedia. (2017). Mechanical Factors Causing Accidents. Retrieved March 21, 2017, from https://www.safeopedia.com/definition/688/mechanical-factors-causing-accidents
Safety,BLR. (2011). What causes Workplace Accidents? Retrieved March 21, 2017, from https://safety.blr.com/workplace-safety-news/safety-administration/safety-general/11zll01-What-Causes-Workplace-Accidents/
ToolBoxTopics. (2017). Seven Common Accident Causes. Retrieved March 21, 2017, from https://www.toolboxtopics.com/Gen%20Industry/Seven%20Causes%20for%20Accidents.htm
AnalyticsVidhya. (2017). 7 types of Regression Techniques you should know! Retrieved March 21, 2017, https://www.analyticsvidhya.com/blog/2015/08/comprehensive-guide-regression/
ASQ. (2017). Failure Mode Effects Analysis (FEMA). Retrieved March 21, 2017, from https://asq.org/learn-about-quality/process-analysis-tools/overview/fmea.html
NPD. (2016). Failure Mode Effects Analysis (FEMA). Retrieved March 21, 2017, from https://www.npd-solutions.com/fmea.html
Risktec. (2017). Quantitative Risk Assessment across major Hazard Industries. Retrieved March 21, 2017, from https://www.risktec.tuv.com/knowledge-bank/technical-articles/quantitative-risk-assessment-across-major-hazard-industries—.aspx
Bell-Energy. (2017). Use of Quantitative Risk Assessment in Chemical process Industry. Retrieved March 21, 2017, from https://bell-energy.com/knowledge-base/quantitative-risk-assessment-01/
AICHE. (2017). Safety and Chemical Engineering Education: Accidents and Prevention. Retrieved March 21, 2017, from https://www.aiche.org/academy/series/safety-and-chemical-engineering-education-accidents-and-prevention
Safetybiz. (2011). Safety Expertise: Uniquely Broad. Retrieved March 21, 2017, from https://www.safetybiz.com/
Canada. Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety. (2017). Accident Investigation. Retrieved March 24, 2017, from https://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/hsprograms/investig.html
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