A framework for the design and analysis of incentive systems for food safety control in supply chains

Since 2005 the EU food industry has primary legal responsibility for food safety control. This requires new responsibilities and relationships between government and industry, and between companies. This research presents a framework for incentive systems for food safety control in supply chains. It emphasizes key elements of food safety control from multiple perspectives and provides insights for the design and analysis of incentive systems for food safety control. An incentive system combines inter-company incentive mechanisms with intra-company decision making processes to control a hazard within the legal environment. Incentive mechanisms, which consist of a performance measure and a performance reward, induce companies to use control measures. The framework can be used to analyze the effectiveness and efficiency of alternative incentive systems in which companies have to cooperate with partners from other stages of the supply chain.Incentive mechanism, food safety, supply chain control., Agricultural and Food Policy,

A controlled experiment for the empirical evaluation of safety analysis techniques for safety-critical software

Context: Today's safety critical systems are increasingly reliant on software. Software becomes responsible for most of the critical functions of systems. Many different safety analysis techniques have been developed to identify hazards of systems. FTA and FMEA are most commonly used by safety analysts. Recently, STPA has been proposed with the goal to better cope with complex systems including software. Objective: This research aimed at comparing quantitatively these three safety analysis techniques with regard to their effectiveness, applicability, understandability, ease of use and efficiency in identifying software safety requirements at the system level. Method: We conducted a controlled experiment with 21 master and bachelor students applying these three techniques to three safety-critical systems: train door control, anti-lock braking and traffic collision and avoidance. Results: The results showed that there is no statistically significant difference between these techniques in terms of applicability, understandability and ease of use, but a significant difference in terms of effectiveness and efficiency is obtained. Conclusion: We conclude that STPA seems to be an effective method to identify software safety requirements at the system level. In particular, STPA addresses more different software safety requirements than the traditional techniques FTA and FMEA, but STPA needs more time to carry out by safety analysts with little or no prior experience.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figure in Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering (EASE '15). ACM, 201

Food Safety training: A Model HACCP Instructional Technique

This research project reports the findings of an original study with regards to a new Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) instructional technique to be used for training purposes. The study investigated the effectiveness of a model HACCP instructional technique, the main characteristics of which are the adoption of a new methodology when teaching HACCP and the use of the emerging computer-based technology of Virtual Reality (VR). The findings highlight the advantages offered by the HACCP-VR instructional technique. This approach takes into account the environmental influences on food safety, thus, ensuring that food safety training is seen as part of an overall infrastructure for effective food safety control.HACCP, food safety training, virtual reality

Modul Enam Sasaran Keselamatan Pasien dalam Pembelajaran Klinik terhadap Perilaku Mahasiswa Keperawatan

This study aims to determine the effectiveness of module 6 patient safety goals in clinical learning on behavioral changes in nursing students at RSAM Bukittinggi. This research is a quasi-experimental research with a pretest-posttest control group design. The results showed that the control group obtained an average of 23 and 28.40 in the treatment group. Attitudes received an average of 51.27 in the control group and 59.6 in the treatment group. Furthermore, the action obtained an average of 28.93 in the control group and 39.6 in the treatment group. Behavioral analysis showed a p-value <0.05. In conclusion, module 6 patient safety goals effectively increase knowledge and actions or implement patient safety goals.   Keywords: Module 6 Patient Safety Goals, Clinical Learnin

The Costs of Improving Food Safety in the Meat Sector

Recently enacted food safety regulations require processors to meet product standards for microbial contamination in meat products. This paper investigates the production function for food safety in meat processing to gain a better understanding of the costs to meat processing firms of changing food safety levels. An analysis of the cost-effectiveness of several technological interventions for microbial control in beef and pork processing shows that marginal improvements in food safety can be obtained, but at increasing costs

Evaluation of Effectiveness of Manufacturing Safety Intervention; A Key to Successful Safety Planning and Management

Safety interventions (which entail a number of activities) are resourceful tools in the control or prevention of workplace accidents. Combination of these interventions achieved more results compared with individual application of these interventions. The cost effectiveness of these safety interventions/strategies is often considered a major interest to the leadership or management of an organization. This work hereby used retrospective accident analysis to determine the effectiveness indices (µk) of the identified strategies, thus determining the preventable number of accidents (Sk). Fifteen strategies (S1 to S15) were determined from the six safety interventions (Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), Training (Tr), Guarding (Gu), Accident Investigation (AI), Awareness (Aw) and Incentives (In)), out of which PPE and Tr were considered prominent. Their respective effectiveness indices (µ1 to µ15) were hereby calculated. It was revealed that µ15, µ11 and µ12 have highest effectiveness indices of 5.50×10-06 (Q/N), 5.46×10-06(Q/N) and 5. ×10-06 (Q/N) respectively. The effectiveness indices µ3 and µ4, however, have the lowest effectiveness indices of 3.50×10-06 (Q/N) and 3.52E×10-06 (Q/N). The highest effectiveness index reduced the highest number of accidents of 46 while lowest effectiveness index reduced the accidents by 19. Keywords: Safety Intervention, Effectiveness Index, Safety Strategy

Costs of Improving Food Safety in the Meat Sector

Recently enacted food safety regulations require processors to meet product standards for microbial contamination in meat products. An analysis of the cost-effectiveness of several technological interventions for microbial control in beef and pork processing shows that marginal improvements in food safety can be obtained, but at increasing costs. The additional food safety intervention costs represent about 1% of total processing costs for beef and pork. Some interventions and combinations are more cost-effective than others

Novel approaches for the safety of human-robot interaction

In recent years there has been a concerted effort to address many of the safety issues associated with physical human-robot interaction (pHRI). However, a number of challenges remain. For personal robots, and those intended to operate in unstructured environments, the problem of safety is compounded. We believe that the safety issue is a primary factor in wide scale adoption of personal robots, and until these issues are addressed, commercial enterprises will be unlikely to invest heavily in their development.In this thesis we argue that traditional system design techniques fail to capture the complexities associated with dynamic environments. This is based on a careful analysis of current design processes, which looks at how effectively they identify hazards that may arise in typical environments that a personal robot may be required to operate in. Based on this investigation, we show how the adoption of a hazard check list that highlights particular hazardous areas, can be used to improve current hazard analysis techniques.A novel safety-driven control system architecture is presented, which attempts to address many of the weaknesses identified with the present designs found in the literature. The new architecture design centres around safety, and the concept of a `safety policy' is introduced. These safety policies are shown to be an effective way of describing safety systems as a set of rules that dictate how the system should behave in potentially hazardous situations.A safety analysis methodology is introduced, which integrates both our hazard analysis technique and the implementation of the safety layer of our control system. This methodology builds on traditional functional hazard analysis, with the addition of processes aimed to improve the safety of personal robots. This is achieved with the use of a safety system, developed during the hazard analysis stage. This safety system, called the safety protection system, is initially used to verify that safety constraints, identified during hazard analysis, have been implemented appropriately. Subsequently it serves as a high-level safety enforcer, by governing the actions of the robot and preventing the control layer from performing unsafe operations.To demonstrate the effectiveness of the design, a series of experiments have been conducted using both simulation environments and physical hardware. These experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the safety-driven control system for performing tasks safely, while maintaining a high level of availability

An Incentive System for Salmonella Control in the Pork Supply Chain

This paper presents a dynamic principal-agent analysis of an incentive system for Salmonella control in the pork supply chain. The incentive system determines quality premiums to the producer, testing frequencies for hogs delivered, as well as charges to the producer for testing and penalties. Using cost estimates and technical parameters, we evaluate the cost effectiveness of plant and farm control measures and trade-offs between prevalence reduction and related costs and gains. We also assess the impact of ownership structure on incentive system parameters and performance for a wide range of prevalence threshold levels. Differences in control actions, bacteriological prevalence and the overall welfare gain for the chain are very small across ownership structures. Changes in the prevalence threshold level lead to substantial changes in the use of farm and plant control packages and performance measures.dynamic programming, food quality, principal-agent, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Livestock Production/Industries,

Combining energy and power based safety metrics in controller design for domestic robots

This paper presents a general passivity based interaction controller design approach that utilizes a combined energy and power based safety norms to assert safety of domestic robots. Since these robots are expected to co-habit the same environment with a human user, analysing and ensuring their safety is an important requirement. Safety analysis of domestic robots determine whether a robot achieves a desired safety level according to some quantitative safety metrics. When it comes to controller design for human friendly robots, it often involves introducing compliance and ensuring asymptotic stability using impedance control technique and passivity theories. The controller proposed in this work uses a passive design that extends the standard impedance control scheme with energy and power based safety metrics to ensure that safety requirements defined in these norms are achieved by domestic robots. The effectiveness of the proposed guideline is illustrated with simulation and experimental results