Analysis of accidents and malfunctions

The central idea of this thesis is to investigate the safety issues in manufacturing industry. How to create a sustainable environment for industrial activities is the goal of safety investigation. In order to improve the safety climate of the manufacturing plant, we need to start from two macro aspects, one is to try to reduce the equipment malfunctions by scientific management of maintenance activities, the other is to investigate the deep reasons behind the Near Misses and accidents, to reduce the occurrence of the substandard events from the root. In the trend of safety investigation in recent years, the post-accident analysis methodology is not as popular as the preventive investigation, that is, the research on substandard events or Near Misses. Therefore, the thesis concentrates on a newly developed accident investigation methodology, the accidents precursor management system. This popular methodology of accident prevention is mainly composed by two steps: data collection and classification based on a dedicated form, covering all possible aspects within the manufacturing plant; using fuzzy logic approach to calculate the possible preventive measures to be adopted to mitigate the occurrence of the substandard events. My work is based on a safety report of Maserati’s Grugliasco manufacturing plant which was performed in 2014, meanwhile, through reading the relevant literature, I enlarge the data collection and classification form, concentrating on investigating the impact of the technological environment of the plant on substandard events. After that, I select three main categories of the observed substandard events and calculate their corresponding preventive measures using the fuzzy logic approach. Finally, I compare the data classification results and the fuzzy logic calculation results with the one obtained with the original data collection and classification form and draw the conclusions. In a word, the causes behind the substandard events and accidents are complicated and comprehensive. We need to start with human resource management, working environment of the manufacturing plant and organizational climate at the same time, to reduce the occurrence of the undesired events.