Do your audits identify critical safety issues?
I read an interesting post on my LinkedIn feed asserting that audits don’t dig deep enough to identify potential hazards that lead to accidents. It quoted research that found only ~16% of 327 audit corrective actions in the sample studied were strongly connected to the hazard identified in the audit question.
I don’t doubt the validity of the study. Organizations often approach audits as a symbolic activity to check off the list. (“Hey, we tried!”) Or, they are just not using a process that will help them identify potential safety hazards. A few superficial corrective actions are implemented to prove the deed was done only to later experience the consequences of not using a solid, systematic process.
Underestimating the benefit of proactive improvement may cost your organization needless incidents, equipment downtime or even a major accident. If you are spending time and resources on conducting audits, ensure your team is equipped to identify significant issues and develop corrective actions on the right things.
Proactive Improvement Using the TapRooT® System to Identify Critical Safety Issues
Many TapRooT® Users don’t know that the TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis System can be used proactively, not just reactively, to identify critical safety issues. One way to do that is by using TapRooT® for audits. If you know how to do a TapRooT® Investigation, I can assure you that you will find using it for audits is a simple process to learn because it is closely aligned to the reactive system you already know.
One thing that makes a TapRooT® Audit different is you really focus on significant issues that might otherwise be overlooked in the audit process. You learn how to identify those issues and then deep dive them to develop effective corrective actions. So, you are spending your time during the audit examining the right things.
Not only that, using TapRooT® for audits will help you find potential root causes of significant issues. So, you are not just doing a few fixes for potential human error or equipment failures, but fixing root causes that may drive those errors and failures.
If you’ve never used TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis, you can learn how to do a reactive TapRooT® investigation AND how to do TapRooT® for audits (plus, other proactive ways) in our 5-Day TapRooT® Advanced Root Cause Analysis Team Leader Training. This is a great course for those who do incident investigations.
For those who:
- want to improve the audit program at their facility
- are responsible for conducting audits
- are burned out from reactive root cause analysis
consider taking our 2-Day Auditing & Proactive Improvement Using TapRooT®. This course is typically only offered once each year so register for the April 29-30, 2024 training and attend the Pre-Summit Course. Plan to stay with us for the 2024 Global TapRooT® Summit in Horseshoe Bay, Texas (near Austin).
