Implementation Of An Occupational Health And Safety Management System (OHSMS) For A Two-Phase Mixture Treatment Plant

Abstract

Total Quality is a concept whereby all resources are involved in achieving the set objectives. The approach to it is also known by the acronym TQM (Total Quality Management). This vision consists of a very broad strategic approach that encompasses both the company organization and the company culture (guiding values). Continuous improvement of business processes enables the company to meet its main targets, such as optimizing productivity, reducing business costs (efficiency), winning or maintaining demand and market share. In addition, the total quality management approach also makes use of ‘problem solving’ techniques, or finding the best solution to the problem encountered.
This vision, adopted as a business organizational model, ensures that safety at work aims at ‘zero risk’ of accidents and injuries, by acting on technology, ergonomics and human resources. Therefore, the inspiring principle aimed at implementing safety must be aimed at avoiding damage not only to the men who carry out the processes, but also to those who are not involved, with no less attention to property and the environment. On an operational level, the link between quality and safety is represented by ergonomics, which aims to seek human well-being in the performance of work activities.
In the Laboratory of the Department of Industrial Engineering and Mathematical Sciences of the Polytechnic University of Marche, an experimental plant for the treatment of two-phase mixtures has been built, simulating a classic situation that occurs in the processes of extraction of fluids from the subsoil (oil and gas), which exploit the pressure of a reservoir which is higher than the transport pressure to create a suction on a second reservoir whose pressure is not high enough to transport on the line. The experimental plant has been analyzed according to a TQM methodological approach, leading to the design of a OHSMS for the plant part, according to the specific UNI-INAIL guidelines, which represents, with the appropriate additions deriving from the real case (Company, its organization and culture;
nature of the fluids making up the two-phase mixture; natural environment in which the plant is built) an important tool for overall risk management.