FROM THE EDITOR
STOP THE BLAME GAME
AS AVIATION MAINTENANCE PROFESSIONALS, WE SHOULD NEVER STOP LEARNING. THE DAY WE THINK WE KNOW IT ALL IS THE DAY WE NEED TO CALL IT QUITS. ONE OF THE MOST ENJOYABLE PARTS OF MY JOB IS THE AMOUNT OF LEARNING I EXPERIENCE FROM RESEARCHING, WRITING AND
EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
JOE ESCOBAR
jescobar@DOMmagazine.com 920.747.0195
EDITING ARTICLES FOR OUR MAGAZINE. As I was reading Roger Beebe’s article this month (see page 30), it got me thinking about diff erent work cultures and how quality and inspection systems have evolved over the years. As part of his discussion, Beebe talks about how human factors education has helped increase safety in aviation. He says human factors “certainly has added to safety in maintenance operations. It has also helped to save many technicians from being disciplined to show that some action was taken after an incident. Thankfully those events are now less frequent.” I have experienced the blame game mentality with several diff erent companies. It’s the “old school” approach to handling errors. It’s a simple three-step process for managers: 1. An incident happens 2. Find out who messed up 3. Dish out disciplinary action When I fi rst started out in aviation, this is the way we did things. The idea was that if you make the disciplinary action tough enough, it would be a deterrent to keep people from messing up. With the evolution of quality and safety management systems, companies realized that although employees make mistakes, those mistakes typically have contributing (root) causes that let to the mistake. Discovering the root cause of the incident is the ideal way to reduce future occurrences.
The key to successfully doing this is to
understand what a root cause is. It’s not fi nding out who messed up. It’s about digging deeper and fi nding what factor or factors contributed to the error. By fi nding root causes and implementing corrective action (and following up on those corrective action), we can help prevent future errors. To get to the root cause, keep on asking,
“why?” People refer to this as the 5 Why’s. Don’t stop asking until the root cause is discovered. For a basic understing of root cause, click on the video below. To have an eff ective SMS program,
EVERYONE must buy into it — especially management. Having a SMS program on paper without the support of management just won’t work. If the blame game disciplinary action persists, employees will lose trust and could even try to hide honest mistakes for fear of punishment. However, employees must understand that human factors and safety management systems are not a “get out of jail free” card. There is no room in this industry for willful negligence. If someone knowingly chooses to ignore policy or procedures and put the safety of our customers in jeopardy, disciplinary action should be swift and harsh. Is your company still playing the blame game? Don’t you know – there’s a new game in town! Thanks for reading, and we appreciate your feedback! – Joe
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DOMmagazine.com | august 2016
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