An Investigation into the Need of Process Safety Management (PSM) in the Palm Oil Industry

Abstract

Palm oil industry (POI) is one of the major industries in Malaysia that contribute more than half of the Malaysia’s export value. Hence, the development of the industry also includes the well-being of the workers in the industry. As a consequence, the POI must adhere to several laws that provide protection for the workers’ safety and health such as OSHA 1994 and availability of guidelines to safety and health management such as OHSAS 18001. However, in terms of process safety, the POI is way lacking behind despite several incidents that show that POI as well is susceptible to process failures that lead to disastrous accidents. Process safety management has been successfully implemented in the chemical process industry (CPI) which is driven by the fact that the process is high risk with the utilization of hazardous materials and likelihood of fire and explosion. Hence, by comparison, it is found that these two industries has some similarity in terms of hazards, however the risk is found to be lower in the POI as compared to the CPI mainly because of the more hazardous materials that are involved in the CPI.