"Lean occupational" safety: An application for a Near-miss Management System design

A critical component of a safety management system is the Near-miss Management System (NMS). An effective NMS aims to recognize signals from the operational field in order to apply more effective prevention strategies. These systems are widespread in industrial contexts characterized by a high risk level, such as major hazard and hospital sectors. Few examples occur in manufacturing processes which are characterized by different operational conditions at workplace and, consequently, different risk types. The Lean Thinking (or Management) strategy currently represents a worldwide competitive tool for improving productivity in the manufacturing sector all over the world. Thus, the application of these principles forces firms to define new approaches to design and manage the whole organization and consequently the safety management system. The paper proposes innovative design of a NMS based on the integration of principles of Lean Management in occupational safety for a worldwide automotive supplier firm. As no reference model has been previously defined, several factors have been assessed aiming to efficiently integrate occupational safety in the current Lean Management system. Innovative features characterizing the proposed model have been also discussed together with first results obtained by the full scale application.