A Risk Evaluation Tool and Process Safety Education Programs in Mitsubishi Chemical Group

The Mitsubishi Chemical Group identifies potential risk factors in the manufacturing process and takes steps to prevent their occurrence by manufacturing process risk assessment. The risk assessment is broadly divided into Safety Assessment (SA), which is implemented when beginning the manufacture of new products and when improving and upgrading existing manufacturing processes, and Safety Review (SR) activity, which is the full inspection of existing manufacturing processes, safety reassessment, and confirmation of countermeasure effectiveness.

To strengthen the SA and the SR activity, SR instructor team was formed in 2003. The SR instructor team is composed of retired and senior engineers. They have a lot of knowledge and experience about process safety. When the SA and the SR activity meetings are held at a section in a plant site, the SR instructor participates together and makes comments and advices. The SR instructor reports contents of duties to a plant manager periodically. The SR instructors are exchanging information by gathering periodically.

To strengthen the SA and the SR activity, we have a risk evaluation tool and safety education programs.

One of the risk evaluation tool used for the SA and the SR activity in Mitsubishi Chemical Group is HAZchart analysis. HAZchart analysis is a tool for Identification of latent hazards. It standardizes procedure of accident scenario modeling.  Accident scenario is modeled by querying three situations repeatedly.  After that, a HAZchart is transferred to Fault Tree and the probability of accident can be calculated easily.

To strengthen the SA and the SR activity, we have two types of safety education programs which are basic course and advanced course.

The basic course education is a process safety education to middle-tier engineers at each of our plant. The contents of this course are Material hazard, explosion hazard, reactive hazard, risk management etc. We intend to continue offering the program with the aim of building on the capabilities of our workforce.

The advanced course is an education to engineers as a chemical process safety engineer (CPSE) with the aim of building a workforce that understands rules and principles of process safety to conduct SR activity. With the aim of better understanding process safety, we have them take part in small-group seminars.

The risk assessment tool and the process safety education programs in Mitsubishi Chemical Group will be shown.