Herbert William Heinrich

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Herbert William Heinrich (* 1886 in Bennington , Vermont ; † June 22, 1962 ) was an American pioneer in the 1930s in the field of industrial safety .

Life

Heinrich trained as a machinist and was appointed third assistant engineer before joining Traveler Insurance Company , where he worked until his retirement in 1956. During World War I , Herbert William Heinrich was an engineering officer in the United States Navy , was appointed chairman of the security section of the US Army War Advisory Board during World War II and became a comrade of the American Society of Safety Engineers in 1961 . He later lectured on security at New York University for over 20 years .

Herbert William Heinrich died on June 22, 1962 at the age of 76.

Heinrich's Law

Heinrich's triangle

One of his 1931 surveys came to be known as Heinrich's Law . Herbert William Heinrich analyzed 550,000 accidents and made the observation of a constant ratio, according to which behind every accident at a workplace that leads to a serious injury, there are 29 accidents with minor injuries and 300 accidents without injury. Since many accidents are based on the same causes, - according to Heinrich's assumption in principle - by addressing common accidents that do not result in injuries, more serious accidents with injuries can be avoided.

According to Heise, this fact was confirmed online in later studies with similar numerical ratios and the above-described, derived principle of Heinrichs, has found its way into the quality management of clinics in the form of a Critical Incident Reporting System (CIRS) in recent years .

Heinrich's theory

Herbert William Heinrich's work is the basis of the Behavior Based Safety theory, which assumes that 95% of all accidents in the workplace are due to unsafe behavior. Heinrich came to this conclusion after reviewing thousands of accident reports drawn up by supervisors that generally blamed workers for the accidents without doing more detailed investigations into the causes. While Heinrich's figure that 88% of all work accidents and injuries / illnesses are caused by "human error" is probably his most cited conclusion, his book has actually encouraged employers to control hazards rather than just focus on worker behavior .

"No matter how strongly the statistical records emphasize personal faults or how imperatively the need for educational activity is shown, no safety procedure is complete or satisfactory that does not provide for the... Correction or elimination of... Physical hazards," wrote Heinrich in his book. (German: Regardless of how strongly the statistical data emphasize personal errors or how urgent the need for training is shown, no security measure is complete or satisfactory that does not take care of ... correction and elimination of ... tangible risks. This aspect of job security emphasizing, Heinrich dedicated 100 pages of his work to the subject of machine safety ) .

Heinrich worked on safety aspects in many industries and published data and guidelines on how to get a good estimate of the probability of real accidents from individual incidents and near-misses . In 1961 he received the ASSE Fellow Award of the American Society of Safety Engineers, the American Association of Safety Engineers .

Criticism of the work of Herbert William Heinrich

Two later books challenge Heinrich's findings and conclusions. Heinrich Revisited: Truisms or Myths by Fred A. Manuele, CSP, PE published by the National Safety Council offers the following criticism in the final chapter: "The intention of this book is to verify the origin of certain premises of Heinrich that have been accepted as truisms How these evolved and changed over time, and their validity, The following is a summary of the observations presented in this book.

  1. Documents belonging to Heinrich's research do not exist. Consequently, there is no material to assess the quality of the research or the analytical system used that led to the premises, nor their validity.
  2. Heinrich's studies are based on accidents that happened in the 1920s. Safety at work and the workplaces themselves have substantively changed since then, as can be proven by the notable facts regarding the reduction of accidents over the past 70 years. Therefore, the current value and applicability of its conclusions should be questioned and examined.
  3. Even if psychology has its place in safety management , the emphasis Heinrich put on it with the expression "being a foundation of the greatest importance in causing accidents" was inappropriate and this overemphasis had a considerable influence on his work.
  4. Heinrich's 88-10-2 ratio suggests that among the direct and indirect causes, 88 percent are unsafe activities, 10 percent are mechanical or physical conditions, and 2 percent are inevitable causes:
    1. The methodology used, which leads to this ratio, cannot be supported.
    2. Current knowledge of the causes suggests that this premise is invalid.
    3. The premise is in conflict with the work of others, such as B. W. Edwards Deming , after whose research the causes of inadequacies in the management systems used can be derived.
    4. Under all of Heinrich's premises, the application of this ratio has the greatest impact on safety practice and has caused the greatest damage, since it focuses preventive efforts on the worker rather than the underlying operating system.
  5. The assumption on which the serious injury is based, the 300-29-1 ratio (Heinrichs Dreieck), is the least tenable of his premises:
    1. It is impossible to imagine that one can come to 10 out of 11 injury-free accidents from individual case data documented with the usual recording methods from 1926.
    2. Conclusions relating to the 300-29-1 ratio have been revised from issue to issue without explanation, which leads to questions about the valid version.
  6. Heinrich's often-mentioned belief that the predominant causes of injury-free accidents are identical to the predominant causes of accidents that lead to serious injuries is not supported by convincing facts and has been questioned by various authors. The use of the premise is misleading as those who do apply it may make the inappropriate assumption that if they focus their efforts on the type of accidents that occur frequently, the possibility of major accidents will also be addressed:
    1. The investigation of a large number of accidents that resulted in death or serious injury by today's accident experts leads to the conclusion that the causal factors do not match those of accidents that occur frequently and with minor injuries go out, are related.
  7. There is no documentation that supports Heinrich's 4-1 ratio regarding the indirect accident costs to the direct costs. Furthermore, it is impossible to arrive at a ratio that is universally applicable.
  8. In the Accident Prevention Principles, Heinrich placed an undue overemphasis on unsafe activities by individuals as causal factors and pays insufficient attention to the causal factors arising from the operating system used. It is the author's belief that many security experts accept Heinrich's premise that "human errors are at the core of the problem and the methods of control must be geared towards human error." would not agree.
  9. In Heinrich's Accident Factors, causal factors originating from ancestry and environment, and mistakes made by people that allegedly originate from inherited or acquired errors, are highlighted, which is inappropriate if today's social mores are respected ... "

The book On the Practice of Safety by Fred Manuele, published a year later, deals even further with Heinrich and compares and contrasts his findings with those of W. Edwards Deming.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ United Steelworkers of America: The Steelworker Perspective on Behavioral Safety . ( Memento of February 7, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ^ A b E. R. Hayhurst: Review of Industrial Accident Prevention: a Scientific Approach . In: Am J Public Health Nations Health . 22nd edition. Issue 1, January 1932, pp. 119-120 , doi : 10.2105 / AJPH.22.1.119-b , PMC 1556694 (free full text).
  3. ↑ The safety bloke.com, Who was HW Heinrich, what did he do and why should you care? 19th September 2012.
  4. ↑ Newsticker: Anonymous information on avoiding accidents . On www.heise.de from June 26, 2008.
  5. ^ HW Heinrich: Industrial accident prevention: a scientific approach . McGraw-Hill, 1931. Quoted in: Erik Hollnagel: Safer Complex Industrial Environments: A Human Factors Approach . CRC Press, 2009, ISBN 978-1-4200-9248-6 .
  6. ^ HW Heinrich: Industrial accident prevention: a scientific approach . 4th edition. McGraw-Hill, 1959. Cited In: John V. Grimaldi, Rollin H. Simonds: Safety management . RD Irwin, Homewood, Ill 1973, ISBN 0-256-01564-3 , pp. 211 .
  7. ^ American Society of Safety Engineers Fellow Award. The American Society of Safety Engineers, accessed September 9, 2016 .
  8. ^ Fred A. Manuele: Heinrich Revisited: Truisms or Myths . National Safety Council, 2002, ISBN 0-87912-245-5 .
  9. ↑ Fred A. Manuele: On the Practice of Safety . John Wiley & Sons, 2003, ISBN 0-471-27275-2 .
personal data
SURNAME Heinrich, Herbert William
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American pioneer in the field of industrial safety
DATE OF BIRTH 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Bennington , Vermont
DATE OF DEATH June 22, 1962