Is Operational Excellence an Enabler of Safety? An Empirical Analysis

This study investigates the relationships between key organizational dimensions contributing to operational excellence and workplace safety performance. The analysis evaluates six perspectives (ergonomics, safety participation, safety compliance, lean thinking, environmental sustainability, and people excellence) through a set of 82-item embodied in a questionnaire structured with close-ended questions. The survey was administered online and distributed to 450 employees working in Italian manufacturing industries. After some descriptive analysis, intended to provide an overview of the respondents’ characteristics, a correlation analysis is conducted to explore internal relationships among the six perspectives. Then, a structural equation model is built, to tentatively predict a company’s performance against safety-related dimensions based on the remaining organizational perspectives. Outcomes highlight a network of significant and meaningful interconnections among the six perspectives, as well as a good fit of the structural equation model; these results pave the way to develop integrated safety models based on operational excellence.