Customer Reviews

System Accidents: Why Americans Are Injured At Work And What Can Be Done To Stop It

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The best book about Safety in the workplace that you'll ever read. Tom Smith analyzes the true root causes of safety failures and rightly places the blame on management's shoulders. Read this book, understand the fundamentals of all operating systems and change your safety culture for ever to one of employee empowerment and reduced accidents.
Strongly recommended for all managers who care about safety, and who can afford not to?"

Mr. Smith is clearly a student of management - good management - and his book advocates using those same managment principals in pursuit of safety excellence. The book borrows heavily from the work of management guru Edwards Deming and shows how well Dr. Deming's work applies to safety. This is not a traditional safety management text and I think that is its main strength. Mr. Smith demonstrates how traditional management and safety practices are, in fact, a detriment to optimal results. Instead he shows the value of a systems approach to safety that engages workers in providing their own safety solutions. This is in marked contrast to the current wave of behavior-based safety "solutions" that use various means to manipulate employees rather involving them in the safety process. This is a timely book that views workers as respected and indespensible safety resources. It clearly describes an overdue and under reported approach to safety which is far superior to more common "fix the worker" hype.

This book thus far will be a good reference to help the company change its culture regarding Safety within my company. It is all about changing and people are afraid to change because they are out of their comfort zone. But for the safety of employees we need to reduce workplace injuries.

I just read System Accidents by Thomas A. Smith, and I was delighted! Finally, somebody got it right. It's the system within which the workers operate that accounts for 85% of all accidents. Beyond the obvious -- no open furnaces without railings or rules against drugs on the job -- managers need to follow his total-systems appoach if they want to permanently eliminate accidents at the least cost. If they follow Thomas' advice, they will increase productivity and morale while they're at it. I advise all managers to read this book. And do it soon, before you lose another dollar doing things inefficiently.

Dr. Gary Fellers
Management Consultant

Tom Smith offers a fresh solution to a stale problem...something to secure the future of American business. Should be required reading for all managers and a textbook for graduate-level learning at every University. Buy this book, read this book, know this book, and then start doing something different with your profound knowledge about safety management.

Tom Smith brings in book form the answers to solving workplace accident problems as the T.V. program, "Numb3rs" solves crimes. In this case, the crime is that most accident solutions blame the accidents on the behavior of the worker, and the accidents keep on happening. Yet, nobody have been sued for coming up with this failed thinking. Tom uses Dr.W.Edwards Deming thought process and Statistical Process Control problem solving methods to solve system problems, so that accident aren't repeated. Simple enough? Than why isn't the concept used? Too many have a stake in the otherwise, and this could put them out of business. Sound familiar? So what are you going to do about it. Apply these methods if you have the guts. Tom has, and now so can you! Bernard A. Sznaider is a retired Occupational Safety Consultant for a government agency, and have successfully applied these methods, introduced to him by the author.