ISO/ANSI is often active one way or another.

It’s kind of like the Microsoft of safety organizations. Once in a while it’ll produce a complete overhaul of safety standards (think of it as going from Windows 7 to Windows 8), but it will often provide updates (or “patches” to use the Windows parlance) to existing standards so worker safety can be more readily assured. Bugs are found through observation and a ton of data points spread out among virtually all industries.

[Image courtesy of Flickr user Vivien Rolfe via a Creative Commons license]

[Image courtesy of Flickr user Vivien Rolfe via a Creative Commons license] Mitigating risk is always very important on worksites, and sometimes certain standardized practices have to be updated to meet changing needs and technologies. Every so often, however, there comes a need to develop new standards to help further mitigate risk to all workers in all parts of a company – even the supply line.

Today’s Safety Matters post will discuss a couple of items to come out of ISO/ANSI work. One is gathering public comment until the end of tis month, while is other is in its announcement and development phase. But both are ultimately important to the mission of improving worker safety at all worksites.

Make Your Voice Heard!

The ISO risk management and assessment standards, known as the ISO31000 series, has had some changes to them recommended, and now is the time for safety officers to review the changes and give their public feedback. The ballot to approve or reject the changes has been sent out and public comment about the changes is due to end Oct. 31.

While specific areas of the standards will be heavily addressed in the revisions, the overall density of the changes will be cosidered “moderate.”

This tends to mean more than just a few tweaks. Maybe Windows 98 to Windows XP. Or something.

If you are interested in seeing how the standards process works, you can check out this link. If you want to review the existing ISO31000 standards, you can find those here. It’s always a good idea to bone up.

Supply Standards to Your Supply Line

The supply line is always vital to the success of any business – after all, without the ability to procure raw materials for your products, the will be a decided lack of product for supply to meet demand. Despite this importance, when it comes to safety, the supply line tends to be a litle bit overlooked in terms of recognizing, assessing and mitigating safety risks in the supply line.

The good news is that not all companies have overlooked it, and ISO is now working with these companies and government organizations to come up with a new standard called Managing Supply Chain Risk. The new standard will be designed to cull some of the best practices currently in place in supply chain risk management and present those across all business verticals.

For more information about this new project, check out this link.