ICAO requires an SMS manual for many aviation organizations required to abide by their SMS mandate. It is very tempting to gloss over your manual... to get it out of the way and never look at it again.
Manuals aren't sexy, and most of the time, they're boring at best. I've read a lot of manuals that were downright painful.
So, how do you make your SMS manual a tool that supports your SMS?
It’s easy to forget just how young aviation safety management systems (SMS) are as their own defined entity. Aviation SMS has truly changed the aviation landscape, but there will certainly be more change as organizations reduce resistance to the change and continue to internalize and practice the mandated SMS regulations.
Many of the central tenets of modern aviation SMS go back much further in history, but as a cohesive whole, 2016 will mark only the end of the first decade for formally solidified SMS in the United States and worldwide.
Topics: Aviation SMS Implementation
We end up writing about resistance to change rather often because we see it often.
Resistance to change is a rather significant problem every aviation safety management system (SMS) implementation deals with. Judging by the large volume of users who read blog articles about this – perhaps such as yourself – our feelings and observations are spot on.
Resistance to aviation SMS is usually more common in newer, immature SMS, and the level of resistance is a strong indicator of how healthy an SMS is.
Topics: Aviation SMS Implementation
This is an exciting article. We share concrete tips and tricks to modify your aviation safety management system (SMS) in this Advanced Aviation SMS series. To date, this advanced series has been focused on a financial business theory supported by science and technology.
In this article, we discuss modifying employees' expected safety duties and responsibilities. Shifting from a pure safety focus has benefits. For example, this "safety-through-quality" change will provide both sufficient quantity and quality of inputs for your aviation SMS to prosper as designed.
Aviation safety management systems (SMS) are not simply regulatory requirements but a "new way of doing business."
"Yeah, we've all heard these ambiguous praises before," I hear you saying.
Smaller aviation service providers have adopted a not-so-secret weapon that can provide financial benefits, but they are not using it effectively.
Aviation SMS possesses extremely powerful risk management workflows that can level the playing field for smaller operators with business acumen. Before the SMS mandate, smaller operators lacked both the size and sophistication required to benefit financially from implementing quality management systems that facilitate continuous improvement. This has changed!
When the drafting founders of modern aviation safety management systems (SMS) planned to improve systemic aviation safety, these managers understood their industry's predominant attitudes relating to safety vs production. They recognized uncontrolled, ill-disciplined operators unnecessarily introduce intolerable risk into our transportation system.
Astute leaders understand that voluntary aviation SMS implementation will never be seriously considered by owners and senior managers unless operators enjoy a chance to financially benefit.
Aviation safety management systems (SMS) needlessly continue to remain unprofitable after almost fifteen years.
Your aviation SMS also fails to produce profits. Why?
Science and technology are not applied with equal zeal as other high-tech-aviation systems. SMS economic disappointments are very easily seen in smaller operators with fewer than 500 employees. This inequality of high-technology adoption creates financial hardships for smaller operators without the education or capital to implement expert systems that minimize financial costs and human efforts required to demonstrate regulatory SMS compliance.
Topics: Aviation SMS Implementation, Quality-Safety Management
Many newly-appointed safety managers try to single-handedly push their organization's aviation safety management systems (SMS) to success. Safety managers are hired to perform an ambitious undertaking that is not heartily welcomed by the entire organization.
SMS implementations require consistent change management activities. These activities naturally induce frustration and resistance to change.
Topics: Aviation SMS Implementation, 1-Safety Policy, Quality-Safety Management
Does your aviation SMS make money? Probably not.
Why not? Most aviation SMS failures result from operators consistently neglecting to follow the prescribed aviation SMS recipe as originally designed. Other operators treat SMS as a "check-the-box" obligation to satisfy as expeditiously as possible, thereby consciously neglecting the "presumable benefits."
These two on-demand videos offer:
