I have been very involved recently with ongoing LI discussions with respected and noted experts in the Safety community, revolving around the perceptions those in Safety have of Reliability, and vice-versa.

In Safety today, there are ‘new’ approaches emerging being lead by noted Safety researchers like Sidney Dekker, Erik Hollnagel and Todd Conklin. Such ‘new’ approaches are being labeled Safety Differently, Safety II, Human and Organizational Performance (HOP), Resilience Engineering and a few more.

There has been an ongoing debate for decades as to whether or not the use of pre-existing logic for conducting Root Cause Analyses helps or hinders the analysis results. Does the use of such pre-existing logic expand the thinking of the team members or does it lead the team to pre-determined conclusions and away from other conclusions not considered in the pre-existing logic? We will explore the fine line between these opposing views and see if there is a middle ground for consensus. [Read more…]

This phrase ‘a little bit bold & outrageous’ was constantly used by my father, Charles J. Latino early in his Reliability career. Charles founded and led one of the first corporate, global Reliability Engineering R&D groups in the U.S. for a company called Allied Chemical at the time (known as Honeywell today). This was in 1972!