What if I told you that your facility could shorten its process safety management (PSM) audit from four days to four hours? This was a reality for a plant I audited recently—all thanks to its digital PSM program. Digital PSM programs are becoming more widely viewed as a best practice for facility owners, requiring less time and resources for auditing and documentation. In an era where we’re all short on time and resources, I’ve outlined below how a digital PSM program can save you both.
Efficient audits
Typically when the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) comes to your facility to conduct an audit, you take out your books and let them have at it. That’s when your control stops. The auditor can spend days flipping through all of your paperwork.
But with a digital PSM program, you have the control. Instead of handing over your books to OSHA, you can take a projector and shoot your digital PSM program on the wall, controlling the audit from there. You have the auditor tell you what they want to see and you pull it up. You’re in the driver’s seat.
Standard operating procedures
With a digital PSM program, you will save a significant amount of time during the auditing of your standard operating procedures (SOPs). Your facility may have 60, but if you have a digital PSM program, you can ask the auditor which specific SOP they would like to see instead of waiting for them to flip through ALL of them individually.
Storage
As an OSHA mandate, you must present your two most recent compliance audit reports. Paper copies can be difficult to keep track of; however with digital PSM, all of your files are in a central, electronic folder.
Preventive maintenance
In addition to refrigeration, you have plenty of other maintenance-related tasks for equipment in your facility. Often, plants use a separate, computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) to generate preventive maintenance (PM) tasks on a regular basis. However, this can be completed on a digital PSM program, too, saving you the time, money and hassle of an additional software program.
While I’ve hit on just a few ways a digital PSM program can save you time, you can read about its other benefits in a previous post titled, “Eight Reasons to Ditch the Paper and Go Digital with PSM.”
If you’d like to learn more about ways a digital PSM program can save you time, email me at foodforthought@stellar.net.
