Quality vs. safety: Not a superiority contest

Tug of war by Joshwept via flickr.com

Safety professionals and others in the company often come into conflict when it comes to convincing management who to prioritize, but Dr. Leemann thinks that is counterproductive. Instead, both sides need to come together to improve a company's success. Read more in this ISHN.com article. 

Recently a colleague at my office, Dr. Ron Schulingkamp, shared a Quality Progress article entitled “Quality vs. Safety” by Mustafa Ghaleiw.  As a quality professional, Ron found it interesting that Ghaleiw draws upon Lowellyne James, a quality lecturer at the Aberdeen Business School in the United Kingdom, pitting the quality culture against the safety culture when describing the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster.  James concludes in his blog post, “Safety is not the issue; it is a lack of an understanding of quality and its impact on the triple bottom-line — economic, social and environmental. It is time for BP, the oil and gas industry and regulators to adopt an industry-wide approach that embraces continuous improvement that goes ‘beyond quality.’”

In sharing the article, Ron asked the question,

“How would we describe our quality culture at the Strategic Petroleum Reserve?” 

Read the full article at ISHN.com.