Where Birds Don't Fly

New year is the time of the year when most of us make promises to ourselves to live a different lifestyle or take on challenges that have been out of reach before. These promises are often made in the spur of the moment and without consequences if not kept. Often, when a new-year resolution is made, it becomes a game to see if anyone can make it last past the first month of the year. Illegal activity of the SMS. This year a new-year’s resolution could be to implement a non-punitive policy in the organization. When a safety management system in aviation is required by the regulations a non-punitive policy must be in place to conform to regulatory requirements. This policy is written and implemented, but there are several options to find an “out” when there are issues that goes against operational practices. Unless there is a total commitment to safety in aviation, where information and data is critical to improve safety, the expectations for a non-punitive policy is that it is not appli...

Santa Claus is manufacturing gifts and presents like never before, with production going exceptionally well. A new toy is the “magic rock” toy, which has the ability to project someone’s thoughts to the rock for viewing. Santa ran into production issues when the supply of rock at the North Pole was running out, but after months and weeks of production Santa finally completed these super-orders and is set for deliveries all over the world. Santa’s improvement of effectiveness. This year Santa had improved the SMS, or the Streamlined Mission Service, to include continuous improvement. During the pre-production period Santa did much research of industry standards for deliveries, but since Santa is the only supplier of this specialty delivery service, industry standards were not available. Over the years of deliveries Santa often crashed on roof-tops and damaged the equipment. These crash-variable were not only expenses which reduced profit, but also causing lack of customer service when p...

Variables are the forks in the road and A simple non-punitive reporting policy is the road to success. A non-punitive policy under an SMS program is a policy for the internal reporting of hazards, incidents or accidents, including the conditions under which immunity from disciplinary action will be granted. The intent of the policy is for organizations to receive data from personnel and then analyse how organizational processes are functioning, or why they are not being as safe as first A simple non-punitive reporting policy. assumed. Within an SMS organization, the outcome of processes is not totally dependant on inputs, but also on human factors variables. The concept in process management that outcome is dependant on what is put into the process is based on standard inputs without variation. Within an SMS environment the variables are human factors, where the same input to a process may yield a different outcome with different personnel involved. If the outputs of SMS processes did ...