(47as) “Reducing the Frequency and Lowering the Severity of Human Error: Optimize Performance”

“Reducing the Frequency and Lowering the Severity of Human Error: Optimize Performance”

Process safety within the chemical, pharmaceutical, and petroleum industries demands extreme rigor where there is little room for human error. However, people are not perfect, and even the best make mistakes. Embracing this truism allows for real safety improvement strategies that are designed with the understanding that human error is inevitable and caused by complex factors. Failure to accept the inevitability of human error will result in continual frustration over adverse events and poor performance. When reactionary measures focus too heavily on the last person(s) involved in the error rather than focusing on the cumulative effects of systemic organizational breakdowns that allowed the event to occur, improvement opportunities are lost. This undue attention on symptoms instead of causes will yield only small gains, whereas accurate analysis and correction of system failures will return great benefits. Human performance will improve once organizational factors are redesigned to promote success and avoid failure. And, as individuals learn and use a set of well-defined, proven tools, common error-traps are mitigated. Thus, a comprehensive, holistic approach is needed that addresses all components of performance – error traps, organizational factors, and performance tools.

Optimize Performance (OP) is the approach that is brilliantly simple, yet profoundly impactful: Simple enough for everyone to learn and use, and impactful because it works. The practical value of Optimize Performance has been realized by more than 9000 individuals over the past 15 months. People embrace the OP brand of human performance because it works for them and their families, on and off the job. When employees embrace error-reduction principles off the job, employers win because of the inseparable connection between safe lifestyles off-the-job and error avoidance on-the-job. Employers reap tremendous benefits as employees put their training to work because they want to, not because they were told they had to.

Optimize Performance methods include:

• A set of well defined “Tools” that act as mental PPE to prevent errors and adverse events.
• Recognition of “Traps” that create error-likely situations.  Both Situational-Factor Traps and Normalized-Drift Traps are identified and mitigated with OP “Tools”.
• An Error-Review process that evaluates how OP Tools/Traps can be mined to prevent recurrence and generate concrete and applicable lessons learned.

OP Traps increase the risk of error-likely situations. Situational Factors affect individuals at a given point in time, whereas Normalized Drift is a trap in the form of weakness and breakdowns in organizational and personal defenses, which become accepted over time. Both sets of OP Traps result in sub-standard performance and adverse events.

OP Tools are a set of thought-provoking defenses that will prevent, predict, or reduce the likelihood of errors and events only after the methods and techniques are fully embraced, learned and practiced.

A simple, but highly effective Error-Review process (OPER) offers a more complete understanding of adverse events and is a critical component of the Root Cause Analysis. The OPER helps determine OP Traps that created error-likely situations, and OP Tools that could have helped predict or mitigate the circumstances that resulted in the event.

Regulatory agencies are embracing human performance concepts and have aggressively begun incorporating them into regulations. On many fronts, human performance is emerging as a very effective and valuable performance improvement process.

Once learned, these strategies improve all aspects of operational performance.  When applied, Optimize Performance changes culture. Improvements will be widespread and widely recognized. The frequency of human error will be reduced, and the severity of the effects of human error will be lowered. Safety will improve, reliability will be increased, productivity will rise, and people’s lives will be enriched.

Brochure Description:

People are not perfect, and even the best make mistakes. Organizational factors and values greatly affect performance and human errors. Optimize Performance is a proven strategy that is brilliantly simple, yet profoundly impactful. Recognize the “Traps” that create error-likely situations and learn how to apply well-defined “Tools” to prevent errors.