After accepting corrective/preventive actions in safety management systems, airline or airport managers simply close the issue and review the issue sometime in the future, such as at a six or twelve month interval. If corrective/preventive actions (CPAs) aggravate the issue, these issues may be reopened and dealt with accordingly. Most airlines and airports are missing out on an opportunity to evaluate whether the CPA continued to prove effective and to document this continued effectiveness.
Documenting CPA effectiveness ensures that other airline and airport managers continue to assign effective CPAs to employees and avoid CPAs that have proven to cause problems or were a complete waste of time. How often have each of us performed a task only to learn later that it was the "wrong thing to do?"
In SMS Pro (a leading aviation safety management software suite), managers either accept or reject the performance of tasks. These tasks may be called "Work Orders," tasks, CPAs, CAPAs, "corrective actions," or something else at your airline or airport. To simplify matters, let's simply call them CPAs for this discussion, for "corrective/preventive actions."
While accepting the performance of a CPA in SMS Pro, managers simply evaluate whether the CPA satisfied the intent of the originator, whose objective was to mitigate or transfer risk, or to recover from an event. The easiest way to achieve this is to use tools we are all familiar with, as in this next image:
How much easier can this be? This simple rating communicates to other airline or airport managers whether this CPA should be used in the future, or whether this was NOT a good idea.
In a simple scenario, let's assume the department head thought that a particular CPA proved very effective in addressing a reported hazard. Upon a future review, the safety committee may decide this particular CPA caused more harm as time went by, or that the CPA quickly lost effectiveness. Safety committees can easily re-evaluate the effectiveness and update CPA effectiveness in SMS Pro's CPA Manager.
Updating the effectiveness of CPAs alerts managers that this particular CPA is GREAT, or is "BAD NEWS" should they wish to try to reuse the same approach on future issues.
Best practices in aviation safety management systems or aviation risk management systems dictate that CPAs should be evaluated and reviewed for effectiveness. Evaluating effectiveness is the first step. Communicating effectiveness is the next step. If your airline or airport fails to communicate CPA effectiveness, you are doomed to repeat past mistakes and miss the opportunity to save your organization time and money.
Without automated software tools, evaluating and communicating CPA effectiveness is not possible to sustain. Too much effort is required to use either MS Excel or cheaply built aviation SMS software tools. Quality aviation SMS software should be easily configurable and adapt to how your airline or airport operates. If you need quality aviation SMS software, consider SMS Pro. Even SMS Pro's basic aviation SMS tools have these capabilities.
In a airline or airport with hundreds or thousands of workers, company knowledge and experience is difficult to disseminate, especially when one considers:
How can airline and airport managers avoid repeating the same mistakes when dealing with issues, whether they are:
SMS Pro can help. SMS Pro is a premier aviation safety management software suite designed for professional safety managers. SMS Pro allows airlines and airports to leverage their most valuable asset - the collective expertise of its employees and contractors.
Imagine the perfect world where manager are confronted with problems and manager have instant access to corrective/preventive actions that have worked in the past. Imagine the time, energy and money saved by repeating corrective or preventive behavior that works! How can this information be beneficial?
When new managers come to an airline or airport, they have little organizational knowledge of what has been tried in the past and whether these corrective/preventive strategies have been effective. When confronted with challenges, managers are helped resolve issues by using SMS Pro. SMS Pro shows them what has worked in the past and the level of effectiveness for proposed corrective/preventive actions.
Airline and airport managers with plenty of experience often need to access to information relating to past experiences from dealing with corrective/preventive strategies. Our memories are imperfect. I have a hard time remembering what I ate for lunch yesterday, much less remembering how I dealt with a safety hazard last year, or two years ago. SMS Pro can help. SMS Pro offers immediate, real time information to airline and airport corrective/preventive actions.
With a list of corrective/preventive actions that have worked in the past for particular types of issues, airline and airport managers can be more consistent when dealing with similar types of issues. This list allows managers to quickly choose what has historically proven effective and apply the same strategies to new issues. Instant access to past information allows managers to delegate tasks quickly and to justify their corrective/preventive strategies to top management.
Corrective/preventive actions are simply tasks. Some airlines and airports call them "Work Orders," CPAs or CAPAs. When creating a new CPA, SMS Pro offers managers the option to apply previous CPAs to address similar issues. CPAs are rated as to whether their performance satisfies intent. Most SMS Pro safety managers and department heads understand this feature because they see it whenever they accept or reject the performance of a corrective action.
If you are following along with the above logic, you will immediate recognize that with accurate, real time information regarding corrective/preventive actions, you can avoid making the same mistake over and over applying corrective/preventive actions at your airline or airport.
Many airlines & airports in northern Canada, Africa and Southeast Asia have unreliable Internet connectivity. SMS Pro's new Hazard Reporting application was designed to for these types of operations. To see a quick video of the new offline hazard reporting app, see http://screencast.com/t/C6zFFbieG
For starters, this is a stand-alone application or "app." You don't need to connect to an Apple store or another device-specific store to get this app. It is available to SMS Pro users to download from their "online account."
This app works on ALL modern devices. IPhones, IPads, Androids, laptops, desktop computers. There is also a responsive design, such that the forms will automatically change based on the screen size. These are the major differences that separate the 2015 offline hazard reporting software from the offline hazard reporting tool that SMS Pro released in 2008. The previous version only worked on laptops or desktops.
Besides the main architectural features just described (one app for all modern devices and the responsive design), the new offline aviation hazard reporting tool has several cool features worth noting:
The best feature is being able to start a report and reload the report later. Or maybe the best feature is that a pilot can be flying for days away from Internet connectivity and still create reports and submit them when coming within Internet range.
Besides being useful for direct employees at airlines, airports and aviation maintenance organizations, there are other use cases where the offline hazard reporting form comes into play:
Allowing vendors, contractors and customers to report hazards without having an account into your system.
Civil aviation authorities to gather electronic hazard reports from aviation service providers operating in their theater.
As of May 2015, only 130 companies will have access to SMS Pro's Offline Hazard Reporting forms. Remaining SMS Pro customers on other servers are scheduled to have access by October 2015.
Users will instantly know whether the feature is available by going to the second step of their online hazard reporting module. Depending on their role, they will see a "Personal offline report link" and/or "Public offline report link."
The personal hazard reporting link is for SMS Pro users to add the offline hazard reporting app to their IPhones, IPads or other mobile devices. The public hazard reporting link is for managers to distribute to:
While SMS Pro is available in Spanish, German, French and two Chinese dialects, the offline aviation hazard reporting app is currently only available in English.
Labels: airline hazard reporting, airport hazard reporting, aviation hazard reporting, hazard reporting software, offline hazard reporting
FedEx Express and ATR have signed a major contract for the firm purchase of 30 ATR 72-600s plus 20 options.
These aircraft will be the first new ATRs to be directly delivered from the factory in a freighter configuration. This new aircraft version, designated as the ATR 72-600F, has a brand new windowless fuselage and is equipped with a forward Large Cargo Door (LCD) and a rear upper hinged cargo door.
Commenting on the signing of the contract, David L. Cunningham, President and CEO of FedEx Express, declared: “ATR aircraft have been successfully operating in FedEx service for many years. We worked with ATR to develop this new aircraft, which include special features to help us grow our business, especially in the air freight market where shipments are larger and heavier. The 72-600F will play an important role in our global network by helping us deliver fast, economical service to small and
“ATR aircraft have been successfully operating in FedEx service for many years. We worked with ATR to develop this new aircraft, which include special features to help us grow our business, especially in the air freight market where shipments are larger and heavier. The 72-600F will play an important role in our global network by helping us deliver fast, economical service to small and medium sized markets.”
“We congratulate FedEx Express for their long-standing success and for their long-term commercial views for the new ATR 72-600F. Their selection of this new aircraft is the result of a deep technical and economic analysis. ATRs in cargo configuration deliver an outstanding service, both serving small communities and feeding larger freighters. The ATR 72-600F is the only new large regional aircraft available on the market for freighter operations. We are convinced that, with its use by FedEx Express, it will become the new benchmark for regional air cargo operations”.