Assignment

1. Reflect on how your organization or an organization with which you are familiar identifies and analyzes hazards. Put the process in context by also describing what the organization does. Do you think the existing process is effective? How could you, as a safety professional, offer suggestions for improvement?

2. What has been your experience with hazard controls? Does your organization use a decision hierarchy, or does it go right to Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) or training after identifying a hazard? How could your organization improve in this area? If you have no experience with hazard controls, provide an example of a hazard where you imagine starting at the bottom of the hierarchy would be the easiest path for management to take. How can we overcome this tendency?

3. If you are a safety professional, reflect on ways in which you participate in design reviews at your organization or how you wish you could participate. If you are not yet a safety professional, find out if your current organization has safety design reviews or find examples of recent project designs or purchases that you feel would have been made safer through a safety design review process.

4. Think about any experiences you had with process improvement methodologies such as lean, Six Sigma, total quality management, or others. What was the focus of the improvement? Was safety part of the process? Based on what you have learned in this unit, could the process have been improved?

If you have no experience with process improvement, discuss how lean concepts could be incorporated where you work or used to work.

Your journal entry must be at least 200 words. No references or citations are necessary.