Lean approaches have been for years – and still are – a basic philosophy for effective management of quality and environmental systems, among others.
Lean approaches could – and should – therefore be implemented to make risk management systems – more – effective.
Typically, lean approaches are designed to do without redundancies, unless redundancies are necessary to reduce risk, just as having more than one engine or piece of equipment or having a team instead of one person only, more than one supplier. Examples abound.
But all the present talking about Risk Based Thinking frightens me. As I expect many an organization to cross the river and swim to the opposite side: from doing nothing or very little. They will now spend huge amounts of money and invest enormous resources in the name of Risk Based Thinking.
Going lean means instead that they should keep themselves afloat amid the river and effortlessly follow the stream.
Many rules have been set for lean manufacturing. Many manuals have been written. Many authors have warned us of the useless complexity and redundancy of them.
Much less has been written – to my knowledge – on lean management of environmental and energy-producing systems, safe on recyclability and less consumption, which look to me quite unattainable dreams.
Environment and energy management systems – just to name a few – are, just like Quality Management Systems and are therefore subject to Risk.
And are subject to manufacturing, too: but we seldom speak of lean recycling or of lean energy production, we think of lean-ness when we speak of quality production only.
LEAN RISK MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
There must be some kind of way to make risk management systems lean. And by lean I mean not redundant or as little redundant as possible.
Everyone of us has seen – on TV or live – scenes of road crashes with or without people hurt, or dead. There are dozen of police half of them doing nothing.
An acquaintance of mine was flying from Milan to Rome hardly an one hour flight. He had a heart attack despite the airline stating that “our crew is perfectly trained for any emergency” he lost his life. Noone of the “perfectly trained crew” thought of calling the doctor on board or land immediately.
Hospitals and airports are not the best examples of readiness to address risk. You see nurses, doctors, policemen strolling around and chatting one with the other.
Is this lean risk based management?
Factual examples could fill an encyclopedia.
Lean risk based thinking should not – repeat not – address all possible risks but only the most probable ones. It’s hardly possible that in a desert area a tsunami sweeps away a refinery. While it’s highly possible – as it really happened in 1963 – that an entire town is swept away from a gigantic water wave coming from the dam reservoir built above the town itself. Those authorities must have been mad to authorize such a project.
Accidents can happen by chance. There’s no question, even the most skilled risk analyst couldn’t do much against any “Act of God”, though something could be done to reduce the severity of their side effects, as history demonstrates.
Yet this has little to do with lean risk-based thinking, that has to lead us to think in terms of risk. Of course, but in terms of not avoiding any risk or its consequences, instead we should learn and train ourselves to evaluate the probability of the risk occurring and the severity of its primary and side effects.
Evaluating risk’s side effects is quite a new approach. We’re used to evaluating primary effects only, but as is demonstrated by non-teleological thinking side effects are often more severe than primary effects.
We often speak impulsively and – when we’ve realized that we’ve offended our counterpart – we apologize, we’re sorry.
Full stop.
But, in a person’s mind, words keep working, and we’ll never know how they work in our counterpart’s mind: we might still have him or her as a friend or made an enemy.
Non-teleological thinking or approaches, can do much to promote lean risk-based thinking. Inasmuch as it removes the focus from a primary, immediate objective – as a risk removal could be – to consider instead the situation “as-is”, with as much attention as possible to details that are not immediately perceptible.
Contrary to a typical FMEA approach, non-teleological thinking doesn’t ask questions like “what if” or “what is not”. It considers instead connections, interfaces, just like a truly and effectively implemented process approach should do.
ISO has certainly done a great thing with risk-based thinking but – just like its process approach that’s still very far from being fully digested. There are doubts whether industry, especially in its present dire conditions, will want to risk another foggy approach like risk-based thinking.