Process Safety Management Framework in Japan

In recent years, accidents of chemical plants are occurring frequently in Japan. One of the reasons is that many Japanese companies do not have a proper process safety management system. The process safety management system should secure the safety of process system and correspond to regulations and technological elements. However, the mechanism of utilizing the information about process safety management has not been established yet. This report describes the activity of the safety division of Society of Chemical Engineers, Japan, to build a process safety management system. The process safety management system in a company receives audits of the 3rd party organization and the companies gain reliance of society by installing a proper process safety management system. A process safety management system corresponds to the entire life cycles (design, procurement, construction, operation, maintenance) of a plant. It is very difficult to extract logics from empirical practices. Therefore, a process safety management system must be designed logically. The HSE/PSE framework which the safety division sectional of the Society of Chemical Engineers, Japan proposes is described as follows. This framework consists of an organization of management system, systematic techniques, and technological elements. A process safety management system is constructed as shown below. First, a model of process safety management system activities is built. A process safety management system is designed based on a model. The company performs engineering activities according to the designed rules. A company should continuously check the appropriateness of a model and process safety activities. If a gap between the current performance and the target of process safety management system is found, a company will improve activities by PDCA cycle. For example, in an operation design, a company designs regular operation and SU/SD operation, the operation at the time of abnormalities, and the operation in an emergency. Strategic maintenance is defined as maintenance based on risk analysis. The importance of apparatus is evaluated based on risk analysis. The maintenance period is decided from the importance of apparatus, and prediction of degradation of apparatus. The safety management resources consist of records of process safety activities, procedures, regulations, standards, plans, targets. The advantage of model based method is shown as follows. The relative relations of individual safety activities are visualized clearly. All the members can share the importance of business, and the flow of information. The resources required for safety activities become clear. When an accident occurs, it simplifies investigation of the cause. The safety division of Society of Chemical Engineers, Japan aims at integration of all the safety activities and is designing a cycle which develops the process safety management system cooperating with companies. Firstly, ideas and concepts from the academia are examined by workgroups and methodologies are established. Then, the methodologies are disseminated. Company experiment and evaluate those methodologies and the case studies are constructed through the experiments. Seminars are set to teach the methodologies to companies.