Call to Action: A Safer Future—Outsourced Manufacturing Without Process Safety Accidents

Collectively, the industries that use chemical processes—including pharmaceutical, chemical, agrochemical, food, biochemical, and related industries—provide numerous global benefits. Outsourced manufacturing allows these industries to leverage global expertise, reduce costs, and increase efficiency, enhancing their ability to innovate and to deliver products worldwide. This chapter is an urgent call to action for the clients, CM, and brokers working in all these industry segments. In outsourced manufacturing, it is tempting for clients, CMs, and brokers to assume that one of the other parties to the OMP is responsible for carrying out these elements. Ultimately, every company—whether or not it is participating in an OMP—needs to address all process safety hazards and ensure that the risk is mitigated to an acceptable level. When incidents occur in outsourced manufacturing operations, there also seems to be a tendency for investigation teams to only consider root causes (i.e., management system failures) related to actions on the part of the CM.