hazard and risk in the design process

[alex fletcher]

the purpose of this thread is to promote safety management in the design process
so answer this if you can What is a Hazard and what is Risk senior designers are encouraged to reply but all post are welcome

[kjellhoegseth]

Hi!
I am a senior engineer been working for the automotive industry as design manager with years of experience with CAD systems as CATIA V5 and also Turbo CAD Pro V11. Furthermore my second profession is treatment of risk by using the German software APIS IQ-RM ( Industrial Quality -Risk Management ) an exellent program for risk treatment. The word risk can be "condensated" to use expert /best practise competence in behaviour of FMEA ( Failure Mode and Effect Analyses ).In developing new products the first goals are to set up separated targets for functions and performances meeting govermental regulations, insurance regulation, customers demands and of course one has able to produce it within reasonable technology and cost ( meet competitors on the market )
Risk analyses always deals with three linked phrases :
Customers effect of failures --> Product failure modes --> The process causes for the failures. Effects are measured by S -severity ranking from 1 to 10 . Frequency of failures (failure rate) in O-occurrance and the Method of detection (in the process) D -detection are also both ranked in scales from 1 to 10. Multiplied SxOxD = RPN ( Risk Priority Number ) will give you guidelines where you have to focus your "Risk Improvement Effort-Actions "
The above mentioned software can be studied on :
..www.fmea.de
Hope this explains to you where to start !

Regards Mr.K.Høgseth (Mc.Sci :CAD & FMEA senior Mentor)

PS: My Hobby the year before I retire is to develop in CAD CATIA a design program how to design sailing yachts in a length range from 25-40 feet .

[alex fletcher]

Yes, I agree Kjell with all you've said, but FMEA only deals with design failure and My concern as senior marine engineer/ occupational health and safety advisor to the boat building industry and The Australian Authorities is that it dose not address the Hazards faced by staff involved in the production process. In Australia our laws give a duty of care to Designers and Employers to ensure that all Hazards are identified and controlled to minimise any injury to Persons, Capital Plant and the Environment. Failure to meet this duty of care could result in fines of 1.1 million dollars Aus to corporations and $110 000 Aus for individuals and up to 15 years imprisonment. There is still no answer on what is a Hazard I hope this gives us all food for thought and thank you for your input

Regards Alex

Please post your thoughts about this thread as global discussion on this subject could make Boating, Boat building and maintenance safer for all who are concerned in this industry world wide.

[kjellhoegseth]

Comments to Mr.Fletcher conserning risk and hazard versus FMEA.
The software I refered to: APIS IQ-RM V5.1 is not at all like the traditional FMEA spreadsheet. If used in the advanced way it can take care of any risk /hazard situation regardless of branches you work in. It is used by several hundreds of European companies working with both development and mass production ,even hospitals working with severe deseases cases use it . Aerospace as well, like Airbus,and I imagine they face risk hazard at a scale even more serious than boatbuilders. Take a look at the APIS home page www.fmea.de, or let some representative show you modern risk analyses.

[alex fletcher]

i must say I am very disappointed with the response to this thread is there no designer out there that even looks at the hazards that arise out of there design at the drawing board stage. Software is not the solution as it is sated by FMEA advice it cannot identify Hazard it only deals with risk (ref to the original question of this thread) what in your view is a hazard and what do you do in the design process to identify the hazards posed. how do u identify material that could be substituted for less hazardous one or processes the could be substituted for less hazardous processes.

[winters]

@topicstarter
I think i understand the difficulty of defining these terms in English.
For those who don't use English as a primary language, including myself, these words may be hard or even impossible to define and/or seperate. Individual defenitions may be even more confusing.

For example:
-Some defenitions of 'hazard' in Dutch are; 'risk', 'chance' and 'danger'.
-Some defenitions of 'risk' in Dutch are; 'danger' and 'risk'.

So could you help out and define your question a bit more (and use interpunctions) ?
Thanks in advance from a stupid Dutchman

[kjellhoegseth]

Hi again ! Hazard /hazardous situations to me will be the effect of serious failures focusing on the performance of the product . The worst cases will be if human beings either inside the boat or a car by loosing control, hazardous also for other humans being in the area. If the device (boat or a car) breaks down immediately,giving no warning signal setting life on risk, it is defined as the ultimate risk situation ranking a 10 on the 10 step scale. Such situations must be analyzed based on best historical practice and use SIX-SIGMA methods / Ishikawa diagrams and if causes can be traced onto one or more of the five branches : man ,method , material , machine or environment you could possible (if we have enough statistical data ) start SPC ( statistical process control ) to find who causes to the hazardious situations.
A far better quality control all through the process manufacturing the product, would be the first medicine to apply until proven capability to avoid future miseries can be secured.
Maybe this will clear up some of the distance we have around hazard case understanding ?
Failure Tree Analyzes (FTA) is another technique which could be applied.
Regards KH.

[alex fletcher]

It is great to See some discussion on this subject in Australia under our legal system the definitions of Hazard and Risk are as follows " A hazard is anything that has the potential to cause any harm to a persons Health, any property, any Plant or the environment"
A Risk is the " consequences of exposure at a hazard " to calculate this we look at the Severity of the Hazard IE the the amount of harm that exposure to the hazard is likely to cause and the Exposure to the hazard " the likelihood of the hazardous situation actually happening
IE It could happen but is very unlikely, it may happen sometime , It could happen at anytime, it defiantly will happen."
I use a risk calculator that was developed by the DuPont Co for my risk calculation, but identifying the hazard is very time consuming, difficult and labourious. For substances I have to compare Data form many alternatives to ascertain witch is least hazardous
For processes and construction techniques its even harder. This adds Time and cost to the design and construction
So what are your thoughts on attaining woulds Best practise in Occupational Health & Safety in boat design

[safewalrus]

Alex

You just got it! "Hazard is anything that can cause harm" - "risk is the realization of that hazard"! So in a Health and Safety world when you do your Risk Assessment you look at what there is in the system or activity, what harm it can cause if it goes wrong, and the Control Measures i.e. how you can remove or reduce the damage done!

A fairly simple operation to a Safety Advisor who should eat and drink this stuff. And the activity basically doesn't really matter, it might be different is all! Or is this too simple?

the Walrus