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Review of recent studies on incidents and accidents showed problems regarding the
quality of information on potential accidents and the related technological solutions.
Therefore, adequate control of the quality of safety-related information seems to be of essential importance if realization of an acceptable safety level is to be achieved. As an answer to solve these problems related to business processes, recent standards on SIS have defined safety lifecycle models. Safety lifecycle models are considered to form an adequate framework to identify, allocate, structure, and control safety-related requirements. Standards on SIS often specify lifecycle phases of these models in terms of objectives, required inputs, and required outputs. A description of the objectives, inputs and outputs characterizes these aspects. It appears, however, that characterization itself is not always good enough to adequately achieve the defined objectives. This resulted in the definition of the following research questions. The first question concerns the way in which lifecycle models can be used to improve safety-related business processes. It is subsequently questioned what exactly is included in each phase, and which other factors determine the quality of the objectives to be achieved in each phase. The third research question is how the lifecycle phases are mutually related, and how the quality of the completion of one phase influences the quality of the passing through of a subsequent phase, and how the quality of information exchanged between lifecycle phases could be controlled. A fourth question that arose during the research performed in this thesis is how to measure these quality aspects in order to be able to control them.

In the process industries, Process Safety Management (PSM) embodies the whole of measures and activities to achieve an acceptable safe operating process installation. This includes the control of the safety-related business processes. Obviously, it needs to be known how these business processes can be controlled. Therefore, it needs to be established which aspects or parameters influence these processes and can subsequently be used to control them. This implies that measurement and analysis of the parameter values should result in the necessary information in order to take appropriate control actions. An essential question that needed to be answered was which parameters are most relevant to be controlled. To answer this question, the PSM involved business processes which were divided into the elementary safety-related activities. For each of these activities, the most relevant parameters that influence the performance of the involved activity were established based on the key performance indicator as used in the field of reliability information management. This resulted in the development of the Safety-related Activity
Management or SAM model. In order to control the performance of the involved activity the values of these parameters must be measured and controlled.
Because of the fact that the activities as part of PSM are interrelated to each other, the performance of one activity directly influences the performance of other activities. The safety lifecycle model was used to establish the relationship between the involved safety related activities. This resulted in the development of the Safety Lifecycle Activity Management or SLAM model. This model describes the information flows between the safety-related activities that need to be realized. The application and control of the PSM related business processes, as based on the concepts of the SAM and SLAM models, is captured by the term Safety Lifecycle Management (SLM). SLM is defined as: ‘the integral control of the safety management activities with regard to all phases of the safety lifecycle. The control is based on the application of a structured safety lifecycle model, which is the framework on which the safety management system is established.’

To adequately control the SLM activities, proper information must be available and thus a number of information flows is required. The research described in this thesis demonstrates that the quality of information flows directly influences the control of safety related business processes. It is therefore demonstrated that qualification of information flows substantially helps to control safety-related business processes. In order to develop qualification criteria of safety-related information flows, concepts of reliability-related information management techniques (the MIR (Maturity Index on Reliability) concept) are adapted for the specific application of controlling safety-related information.

Based on the SLM concepts and on the MIR concept, the formalized MIR-based SLM analysis technique has been developed. This analysis technique consists of 7 steps that led to the detection and explanation of safety-related problems that might result in an accident.
One of the main steps in the MIR-based SLM analysis technique is the development of safety-related activity and information flowcharts. The application of safety lifecycle models clearly structures the development of these flowcharts.
The application of the analysis technique proves that indeed a reasonable explanation of safety-related information transfer problems could be given for problems which otherwise were difficult to explain or unexplainable. Based on eleven industrial case studies, these safety lifecycle model based activity flowcharts have proven to be a valuable means to explain the observed problems. It is concluded that the application of the SLM concepts together with formalized MIR-based SLM analysis technique enables an organization to allocate weaknesses in the control of safety-related business processes. It offers the ability not just to learn from accidents that have actually occurred, but more important to serve as a means to prevent these accidents from occurring. Latent problems within the safety management system are traced much earlier, and can subsequently be resolved before they result in serious accidents.
In general, it was expected that the theoretical principles of SLM and the conceptual steps of the formalized MIR-based SLM analysis technique could be very well applied to other industrial sectors. The MIR theory that has been adopted (and adapted) from its development area, namely the consumer products industry, immediately demonstrated its applicability in a different industrial sector. It is the general impression that many problems related to quality, reliability or safety of products, processes or services are analyzable using the MIR concepts, on the condition that their realization is characterized as being reproducible or repetitive.

In general, it was concluded that the theoretical principles of SLM and the conceptual steps of the formalized MIR-based SLM analysis technique could be applied to other industrial sectors. The MIR theory that has been adopted from its development area, namely the consumer products industry, immediately demonstrated its applicability in a different industrial sector. It is the general impression that any problem that is related to quality, reliability or safety of products, processes or services is analyzable using the MIR concept, on the condition that their realization is characterized as being reproducible or repetitive.

Please contact Dr. Bert Knegtering directly to obtain a copy of his thesis. You can reach him at:
bert.knegtering 'at' honeywell.com