Deming's 14 Points Applied to Safety
Point 3: Eliminate the need for mass inspection by building quality into the product or process in the first place.
Deming Part 2
Deming was referring to the practice of inspecting every piece of product at the end of an assembly line to separate the defects.
Instead, he encouraged improving the quality of the process to decrease the defects, thus eliminating the need for mass inspection.
When applied to safety, Deming would encourage us to focus on measuring and improving the SMS by analyzing leading indicators like employee behaviors, procedures, and equipment design. SMS improvement does not rely on the measurement of lagging indicators like the number of incidents and accidents.
Measuring only results of the SMS, like accident rates, is like driving a car down the road and trying to stay in your lane by looking through a rear-view mirror. All you can do is react, after the fact. Accident rates tell us nothing about why accidents are happening. Incident rates, accident rates, MOD rates, etc. all measure the endpoint, and since these measures are inherently not predictive, these statistics provide little useful information about the surface and root causes for injuries and illnesses.
Knowledge Check Choose the best answer for the question.
8-5. Which of the following indicators should be the focus of analysis in the continuous improvement process?
You forgot to answer the question!