Two recent industrial tank failures highlighted the link between reliability and safety. When one of these tanks failed during a shift change in the operational area of an integrated pulp and paper mill, the resulting leak caused multiple fatalities. In the papermaking process, the leaked substance is known as “white liquor” and is used to dissolve wood chips during pulp production.
It is a product and a process I know very well.
Although I now work as a management consultant and instructor in safety leadership practices, I spent four decades in pulp and paper manufacturing. As this tragedy illustrates, the process involves risks that demand close attention. Because it is also a capital-intensive business, reliability receives significant attention from leadership.
Achieving the desired return on investment depends on very high operating rates, making equipment integrity crucial. Measurement and metrics are key management practices, including the gold standard of reliability metrics, Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE). OEE measures the percentage of production time that is truly productive.
After college, I began my career as a pulp and paper manufacturing process engineer, responsible for ensuring that machines produced paper meeting customer quality standards. My job involved not only meeting the paper’s physical and functional specifications but also delivering the required quantity on schedule. Achieving this goal gave me the opportunity to work closely with the company’s reliability department. I found myself part of the evolution toward greater maturity and sophistication in reliability management.
Over the years, we moved from a model of simple asset replacement after failure—with minimal preventive maintenance and no predictive maintenance—to sophisticated processes that assessed assets during intensive use, alongside process improvement techniques such as Lean Six Sigma tools.
I was fortunate enough to work with a Reliability Manager who introduced me to concepts that were very advanced for the time. One of his favorite concepts was the “Window of Opportunity.” A critical piece of equipment that stopped running—such as a paper machine, a digester—represented an “opportunity” to improve reliability.
He drew inspiration from commercial aviation, the field where operational reliability originated. An aircraft grounded on the tarmac had a very limited turnaround time, requiring the maintenance team to act quickly to take measurements, perform emergency maintenance, and get it back into operation.
Could a reliability “Window of Opportunity” also be an opportunity to improve safety?
Conventional Wisdom
My interest in reliability didn’t end when I finished my work in the pulp and paper industry. Recently, I read an article in a trade publication that caught my eye. It raised the question: “Does reliability guarantee safety?”
The author’s answer began: “Conventional wisdom holds that ‘improving reliability, in and of itself, guarantees safety.'”
Whenever I see the phrase “conventional wisdom,” my first thought is that it’s just another way of saying, “a habitual way of thinking.” By that, I mean something people accept without subjecting the matter to critical analysis. The fact that many people believe something to be true doesn’t make it true.
Even when it comes with the label “wisdom.”
As for this specific conventional wisdom: in practice, can greater reliability reduce injuries? Does it actually reduce injuries? Is there, in fact, a correlation between reliability and safety?
In my experience, the answer begins: “It depends.”
Another Case
Wisdom combines knowledge and experience to generate insights. Having worked in operations alongside reliability management specialists for decades, I would like to share my observations as to the relationship between reliability and safety, starting with an example I witnessed firsthand.
While working at headquarters, during a visit to one of our mills I did something I often did: I went to the paper machine—where cellulose fiber is transformed into paper. It’s the heart of a paper mill. That day, the team couldn’t get the paper to run through the machine. This was a process that usually took just a few minutes.
The shift was coming to an end; fatigue, heat, and exhaustion were taking their toll, and the team had been trying to complete the task for nearly an hour without success. You may not work in the paper industry, but I am sure these challenges sound familiar to you. It is a reliability issue, but these kind of problems can lead to injuries.
That was the moment the Mill Manager suddenly appeared by the machine. He calmly asked everyone to stop—that is, to let the machine run without producing paper—and gathered them up for a quick conversation.
It was the perfect example of a “Window of Opportunity”—and of a leader “stopping the job.” Today, I also call this a Moment of High Influence: the perfect opportunity to exercise leadership.
He drew everyone’s attention to the situation, noted that the shift was ending and the new team was arriving, and then asked, “What do you think about asking the new team to perform the sheet-threading process while we stand here and watch?”
It was a fascinating case to witness firsthand. The new team took over, and the sheet moved through the entire process within the standard time, without a hitch. The outgoing team watched the whole procedure and applauded their colleagues.
Later, they thanked the Plant Manager for treating them with dignity and respect.
Reliability and Safety
Not all leaders handle these complex challenges so well. When reliability and OEE showed a downward trend, there were times when leaders sought someone to blame rather than focusing on processes and systems. I know of cases where injuries were caused by the pressure for immediate results.
In retrospect, it is clear that low reliability could be correlated with safety performance. There were instances where a loss of reliability resulted in injuries. Therefore, in our business, there was a relationship between reliability and safety.
A tank imploding during a pulp and paper manufacturing process serves as another example. Investigators will determine the causes, but I can say, based on my experience, improper operating or maintenance practices are good candidates for a process tank implosion. Such causes can be classified as a “loss of reliability,” but they are, in a sense, management failures.
Looking back—and taking the time to analyze the details—the causes of unsatisfactory safety performance were often linked more to how leaders handled reliability issues than to the problems themselves.
Without the proper leadership tools and methods, leaders struggled to achieve results that ensured everyone returned home safely at the end of the day. The situation worsened as reliability indicators declined.
We simply lacked the leadership tools necessary to manage safety effectively.
On the other hand, even when we saw excellent productivity and quality results—that is, operational reliability—we still faced immense challenges regarding operational discipline and team performance concerning safety.
The explanation for this lies not in processes or equipment, but in the human element. Equipment and processes fail; people make mistakes.
The fundamental difference is that equipment and processes are designed to achieve an expected outcome; the same is not true for people. They decide whether or not to perform a task—and, if they do, the quality with which they perform it.
Management Practice
Could the processes that improve reliability also be applied to improve safety?
In reliability management, practices involving the observation of processes and equipment are adopted. When a leader observes something, they analyze the situation and compare it against an objective standard. If a problem exists, it is corrected.
In safety and people management, behaviors are observed. It is important to recognize that, just as equipment and processes exhibit symptoms, human beings also show signs of unsatisfactory or declining performance.
Processes and equipment do not require accountability; however, for people, accountability is one of the best tools a leader has at their disposal. If there is a behavioral issue—especially regarding safety—the behavior must be corrected, guiding the person to act safely the next time they perform the activity; conversely, good behaviors always deserve reinforcement.
Larry Brown, a renowned basketball coach, used an approach he called “Positive Coaching.” He claimed that he always provided feedback to his athletes, maintaining a ratio of four or five positive comments for every negative one.
The Relationship
Based on my experience and observation, high-reliability standards and processes go hand in hand with safety. However, reliability management processes do not act as catalysts for safety improvement. In fact, when programs like 5S or workplace organization (housekeeping) deteriorate, safety can be compromised; conversely, high standards in these areas do not necessarily guarantee an improvement in safety.
Although there is indeed a point of convergence between reliability and safety, reliability in itself is limited to achieving the specific level of operational excellence envisioned in the design. It is like the plunger of a syringe reaching its limit: going beyond it requires a different dimension.
That fundamental dimension is leadership. Driving reliability programs and processes to achieve high standards of operational excellence requires leadership—and leaders who employ a distinct set of tools. It is no different with safety; leadership simply orbits a core that is distinct from that of reliability.
My advice: instead of accepting the conventional wisdom that “improving reliability improves safety,” the better approach is to view low reliability simply as one more of the difficult safety challenges a leader must face—and address effectively.
Newton Scavone
July 2026