Continuous Improvement Loops in Aviation—Part 2

Safety Drill in St. Petersburg

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!

Read more

Continuous Improvement Loops in Aviation—Part 1

Korean Air Flight 2708 fire in 2016
Korean Air Flight 2708 fire in 2016

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.

Read more

Keep Calm and Stop the Line—Part 2

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!

Read more

Manufacturing in a War Zone – Part 1

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.

Read more

On Workplace Safety

Injury Fork LiftIn 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!

Read more

Alec Baldwin and Workplace Safety

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.

Read more

Cookie Consent with Real Cookie Banner