Adopting a Safety Management System (SMS) has typically required significant resources, large teams, and expensive technologies and expertise to establish le...

Many companies will be familiar with the terms Total Quality Management (TQM), or Total Production System (TPS). They began initially to describe a Japanese-...

Dilution can be defined as "the process or action of making something less strong or valuable." Over the years I have experienced this effect at work when i...

Safety performance is improved when organizations take a comprehensive and systemic view of their safety efforts. This requires different skills than impleme...

At a fundamental level compliance programs protect the value stream from threats that hinder the creation of value. Each program contributes to keeping the v...

The administration problem is primarily that of reducing uncertainty within the organizational system (Organizational Strategy, Structure, and Process - 1978...

Machines, organizations, and communities include and are themselves part of systems.  Russell L. Ackoff a pioneer in systems thinking defined a system not as...

Change can be a significant source of risk. That is why compliance programs include a risk-based process for managing planned changes. This process is commo...

When it comes to playing games where the goal is to have fun “Best Effort” is often applauded and even celebrated. We often hear statements like, “you did yo...

4 types of obligations 4 compliance functions 4 purposes 4 measures

Counting near misses, incidents, defects, violations, and other non-conformance is of value and necessary as part of prescriptive: regulation, industry stan...

The purpose of a compliance management system is to maintain state which is achieved through consistency, reduction of variation, and achieving objectives. ...

API RP 1173 provides a framework for companies to evaluate their safety systems and processes to more effectively buy down risk and continuously improve safe...

I have spent most of my career building information and management systems in support of engineering, compliance, and mission critical processes for highly r...

In response to increasing and often overlapping requirements from standards and regulatory bodies, many companies are looking to integrated and proactive a...

Outcomes are the effects of capabilities which means that you if you want to advance your outcomes you need to advance your capabilities. The purpose of a m...

Increasingly, we have observed that regulatory and standards bodies are expecting companies to use capability maturity models to improve performance and adva...

Almost all compliance initiatives depend on management systems to ensure obligations are met. This applies to safety, quality, environmental and regulatory o...

We expect that as systems improve that the certainty of meeting objectives increases. Instead, what often happens is that systems become more complex over ti...

This is the perfect time of year to evaluate your compliance programs and make adjustments so that you achieve your objectives. However, to make that assessm...