Integrating occupational health and safety into plant simulation

Diminished quality of life (DQL) is based on the combination of tradition risk management methodology and Health Organisation Disability Assessment Schedule (WHODAS), which has a special focus on measuring long term health risk at work. DQL identifies the likelihood of an exposure incident arising, and quantifies the biological consequences. Plant simulation provides a quantitative methodology for analysing the dynamic and economic performance of a system, such as a production plant. These simulations are used for production planning and plant layout studies. However, there is little integration between plant simulation and industrial safety. These are commonly treated as independent activities, which is odd given that human operators are common to both. This paper develops a methodology namely Plant Safety Simulation (PSS) which combines plant simulation and DQL as one methodology to manage economic outcomes and occupational health and safety (OHS) at the same time. This methodology allows professionals measuring health and safety (H&S) in a quantitative method rather than a qualitative method. The key concept is the creation of a routine within the plant simulation software, that determines DQL for an activity. The 'DQL Routine' calculates the safety risk for that activity. In parallel the plant simulation determines the production time and efficiencies for the same activity. The outputs of the multiple 'DQL Routines' are then aggregated to determine the total health and safety risk for the plant layout and its operational settings.