Best Practice MOC and Pssr Process

Management of Change (MOC) is still the most challenging element of OSHA’s Process Safety Management (PSM) standard, the EPA’s Risk Management Program (RMP) rule and now the US Department of Interior’s Bureau or Safety and Environmental Enforcement’s Safety and Environmental Management Systems (SEMS). Even though the PSM standard has been around since 1992 and industry has been managing changing forever, we still can get it wrong. The mindful or diligent efforts of many working in concert is necessary to ensure that change is identified, analyzed and executed in a quality way. Just when we get it right on paper and get the workforce up to speed, we have employee turnover, neglect and sometimes regulatory change. New actors and a constantly changing script make it hard to get change managed efficiently and effectively. Many high profile companies have addressed this challenge by creating standard processes and automating those processes across their manufacturing or production facilities. Two major processes that have been successfully automated are the MOC and PSSR processes. Technology has been used to automate each step of the MOC workflow; enabling the collection of change ideas, formalizing the analysis of the idea, approval and execution of the change. It can also help provide visibility of the health or current state of your MOC and PSSR processes. The use of software can enable the standardization of best practices. This paper discusses how the chemical process industry has decided what MOC and PSSR best practice is and how it should be automated.