HUMAN-FACTORS - CASE-HISTORIES OF IMPROPERLY MANAGED CHANGES IN CHEMICAL-PLANTS

Chemical plant employees enjoy a safer place to work than most other p laces of employment. Despite the excellent overall record, there have been some tragic, catastrophic chemical plant accidents that have tarn ished an excellent performance. Some of these tragedies were the resul t of inadvertent, unintended or poorly performed changes. This paper w ill attempt to convince the audience there have been too many incident s that have occurred because there were failures in managing changes i n chemical plants. Medicre ''Management of Change'' systems can be str engthened and effective ''Management of Change'' systems can be made m ore effective through sharing simply written reports. Concise, well wr itten case histories of past mistakes with sketches and a generous num ber of photos should be shared with chemical plant personnel who are r esponsible for day to day operations to change some plants' culture.