Our Process Safety Journey Continues: Operational Discipline Today

In the late 1980’s, DuPont defined Operational Discipline (OD) as the deeply rooted dedication and commitment by each member of an organization to carry out each task, the right way, each time. Many other companies have similar definitions, and this emphasis has not changed. If anything, the dedication and commitment to OD has grown stronger. Operational discipline still reflects the strength of an organization’s safety culture in making process safety programs effective and in providing tangible results for preventing injuries and incidents. What has changed is how we better apply Operational Discipline as one of the three essential process safety foundations. When combined with both a strong Safety Culture and Leadership and robust Process Safety Systems, the company’s strong Operational Discipline foundation helps improve process safety performance. This paper describes how collaborative efforts over the years have helped us to better evaluate Operational Discipline in context of the Risk Based Process Safety element Conduct of Operations, briefly presents how OD programs can be implemented using an example from Dow, and provides some practical guidance and approaches that an organization can use on their process safety journey to improve their OD program.