How to move the organization through the change with confidence

Production plants for Chemicals, Food, Pharma, etc., need to perform changes all the time — whether the change is in a shift organization, a new process or product introduction, equipment replacement, or another type of change.

Production plants are designed to be safe for the people who work there and the surrounding, so running organizational or technical changes through the safe path must be managed exceptionally well. Before executing a change, the risks of that change must be known and evaluated. Only then can the organization move forward with confidence.

Keep reading to learn more about what makes for effective and safe change management.

Why is good management of change important?

Whether big or small change occurs, every site must go through certain phases, including proposing, approving, implementing, and checking a change.

There are many perspectives to consider in the change process. For example, different specialties like electrical, mechanical, safety, and process are all people who need to work together on their piece of the change and give the change their blessing. The critical question they seek to answer is always will this change introduce any new risks?

Additionally, there should always be someone overlooking the entire change process to balance these perspectives and ensure nothing is overlooked. There are many factors and perspectives to consider for each change, and each change can have a significant impact on the overall process, flow, efficiency, and safety of a site. The management of change procedure should support everything goes as smoothly as possible.

How to define a change?

It is essential to define what we consider a change.

How “big” or “small” the change is determined by the level of risk it introduces. If the plant starts using a new pen in the office, that is probably too small to be managed as a change. Though sometimes, a tiny change can introduce enormous risks. One wrong spare part can bring down an airplane. The key is recognizing changes and adequately assessing the risks they could trigger.

It is a valuable exercise to look in maintenance management systems or permit to work systems to review jobs described there and check whether the job is actually about executing a change. It tells you something about the effectiveness of the organization in recognizing changes.

Once we define a change and identify which events should be managed as a change, it is also essential to decide how to manage them.

Having a single approach to managing changes usually is insufficient. Often when employees find the procedure of submitting low-risk change requests too complex, they tend to bypass it. Thus to handle different types of change fast and smoothly enough, the approach should be agile, and .changes need to be managed differently depending on the scope, complexity, and risk involved in the change.

A hurdle to innovation

One of the downsides of an ineffective change management process is that it prevents innovations. Innovations trigger changes at all levels, technical, behavioral, cultural. While change occurs, it is crucial to keep current processes running smoothly without introducing new risks.

Moreover, if people know that the existing process of managing changes does not support them enough, and thus, changes cause a rise in stress level, hassle, massive documentary work, and extra pressure on safety measures, they may resist the change. The fact that the process’s complexity is high can also result in changes being lost. Somebody is reviewing but not clear who that is. How many changes do you have hanging somewhere halfway?

As a result, those who might benefit from innovation prefer to keep the “oldie, but goodie” status quo.

Why should a site implement management of change software? 

There are many benefits to implementing management of change software on–site.