Safety – AllAboutLean.com

Continuous Improvement Loops in Aviation—Part 2

April 25, 2025April 22, 2025 by Christoph Roser

Commercial aviation is among the safest modes of transport. This is thanks to a continuing improvement process spanning decades (and still ongoing). In this series of posts I will look at how aviation safety improved, using the passenger safety instructions as an example. My first post showed you how it was before the FAA and how it is now. This post looks in particular how the passenger safety institutions (i.e., the cards and the briefings) improved since 1940 thanks to the FAA. Now, pay attention!

Continuous Improvement Loops in Aviation—Part 1

April 25, 2025April 15, 2025 by Christoph Roser

Commercial planes are one of the safest ways to get around. Accidents are rare, and your likelihood of dying in a plane is very small compared to all other modes of transportation. However, this was not always the case. Safety in modern aviation is the result of many improvement iterations. Let’s have a look at how aviation improved one of its aspects, namely the passengers’ knowledge of what to do in the case of an emergency.

Keep Calm and Stop the Line—Part 2

January 14, 2024January 9, 2024 by Christoph Roser

In manufacturing, a common sentiment is that the line (or generally the process) must run. There is some truth to that, but—counterintuitively—for a system to run well you need to know when to stop it too. This is my second post in a series giving you an overview on when it may be better to stop the line rather than keeping it running (and making everything worse). Keep on reading!

The Toyota KPI Dashboard—Safety

October 14, 2023October 3, 2023 by Christoph Roser

In my last post I showed you an overview of the Toyota KPI dashboard. This time I will look in more detail at the first (and arguably most important) section on safety. And, while I’m at it, let me also tell you some more about safety at Toyota.

Manufacturing in a War Zone – Part 2

August 23, 2022August 16, 2022 by Christoph Roser

This post continues to discuss running a plant in a war zone. While the first post focuses on the difficult question of whether you should continue operations, this post looks at what you could do if you decided to continue running your plant despite the armed conflict nearby.

Manufacturing in a War Zone – Part 1

October 2, 2024August 9, 2022 by Christoph Roser

Destroyed Russian Tank in Ukraine — Destroyed Russian tank in Ukraine

Running smooth operations is difficult enough in peacetime. But it becomes much trickier if you are located in an area experiencing an active armed conflict. Yet, there are many active armed conflicts on the world, like Ukraine, Myanmar, Afghanistan, and others, many of which have been ongoing for decades. I have put together some of my thoughts in the hope that it may help people and factories in difficult circumstances, with special focus on the current invasion of Ukraine.

On Workplace Safety

January 26, 2022January 18, 2022 by Christoph Roser

In my last post I looked in detail at an example of a workplace accident with Alec Baldwin, where a misfire in a gun killed a coworker. It seems quite a few failures and oversights had to come together to result in the accident. This is the same in industry. A major injury is rarely the result of a single mistake. Modern industry has plenty and often redundant safety mechanisms to prevent accidents. Yet accidents do happen. Let’s look deeper into workplace safety!

Alec Baldwin and Workplace Safety

January 26, 2022January 11, 2022 by Christoph Roser

On October 21, 2021, actor Alec Baldwin handled a prop gun on a movie set that fired and killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and injured director Joel Souza. And, as far as I know, it was not even Alec Baldwin’s fault. While the investigation is still ongoing, it looks like a lot of safety regulations were ignored or applied sloppily. Accidents in manufacturing and other industry also often have not a single cause, but multiple points of failure, before somebody gets hurt. A good reason to look deeper at workplace safety. This first post looks in more detail at the events on the film set, and a second post looks generally at workplace safety.