Navigating Safety Management Systems (SMS)

In this episode of The Quality Horizon, members of the SCMH Safety Management System Project Team discuss the importance of Safety Management Systems (SMS) for suppliers in the aviation industry. 

Emphasizing the need for effective communication within the supply chain to enhance safety performance, and introducing new guidance materials aimed at helping suppliers understand and integrate SMS with their existing Quality Management Systems (QMS). 

To learn more, visit the SCMH website at scmh.iaqg.org 

Transcript

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Susan Matson: [00:13 – 00:48] Greetings, everyone, and welcome to the IAQG Quality Horizon. I'm your host, Susan Matson, and with me today are three individuals from the SCMH Safety Management System Project Team. First, we have David McDermott from Pratt & Whitney, who is the lead of the SCMH Safety Management System Project Team. Next, we have Tom Enyart from Boeing, who is the lead of the group's sub-teams. And finally, we have Andrea Bossi from Leonardo Helicopter, who is the sub-team's communications lead. Welcome to the show, gentlemen. 

David McDermott: [00:48 – 00:49]  Thank you. 

Susan Matson: [00:49 – 01:05] This team recently published some new guidance materials on what suppliers can expect from SMS. So David, I'd like to start with you. Can you give our listeners a little bit of background on yourself and why this content is being added to SCMH? 

David McDermott: [01:05 – 02:52] Yes. Thank you, Susan, and hello. I appreciate you hosting this topic today. I'm a fellow at Pratt Whitney working product safety. and have had the privilege of co-leading the IAQG supply chain management handbook writing team on safety management systems or SMS. Over the past decade or so, SMS has emerged as a regulatory requirement for many organizations in the global aviation system with design and manufacturing organizations most recently being mandated. There are several documents and many pages of literature on SMS for regulators and for those affected design and manufacturing organizations. However, there's a lack, we found there's a lack of a lot of information for organizations in the supply chain that do not have this direct SMS mandate, but support organizations that do. And we know the supply chain plays a significant role in the design and manufacture and sustainment of aviation products. Thus, they must be involved to optimize safety performance. The Supply Chain Management Handbook is a great resource for global suppliers to access. I'll mention it's available at the website, it's easy to remember, scmh.iaqg.org, and in that, at large is a lot of chapters on how to interpret quality standards. Tools and methods are shared. So having the safety management system or SMS material in that will continue this tradition for this very timely topic of safety management. 

Susan Matson: [02:53 – 03:02] Thanks, David. So if a supplier is not mandated to have SMS, Tom, why would they need this information? 

Thomas Enyart: [03:03 – 04:24] Susan, that's a really important question. The global aviation system is highly interconnected. Hazards can be introduced at any point in the tiered supply chain. The design and manufacturing organization may have the best insight into the impact of hazards on the operation of aircraft, but would be lacking on the identification of the hazards at the lower tiers of the supply chain. So each supplier, in fact, has a better view of potential hazards, but lacks the perspective on the impact to aircraft operations. So one of the objectives in an SMS is to develop a means where shared hazard information in both directions, up and down the supply chain, is available. So while not mandated, the organization with a full SMS will need to work with their suppliers That's where the SCMH guidance that Dave was referring to comes into play. Since the QMS standard already has product safety requirements, the SMS community has defined a set of essential activities or expectations. And these documents will explain what those expectations are and how an existing QMS can be leveraged to fulfill these expectations. 

Susan Matson: [04:25 – 04:30] Thanks for that. Andrea, who is the target audience for SMS guidance materials? 

Andrea Bossi: [04:30 – 05:22] Well, Susan, all organizations can benefit from the information, but the primary audience are small to medium-sized organizations who are suppliers to larger organizations that may have mandate SMS regulations. These organizations do not have a requirement to implement an SMS, but will be impacted by the needs of their customers' SMS. So this guidance material is intended to show how an existing QMS can be utilized with the appropriate additions to help meet the SMS needs, in practice, how to use existing QMS tools to support the customer's SMS. This guidance material also helps larger SMS organizations to align expectations so those in the supply chain are not inundated by too many unique requirements from different customers. 

Susan Matson: [05:23 – 05:42] Ah, OK. So why do we need safety management systems when we have a QMS, David? 

David McDermott: [05:29 – 06:46] Yes, this is another great question and one that our team spent quite a while discussing ourselves. QMS is very beneficial in having companies develop policies, procedures, and controls to achieve customer needs with compliant and conforming products. SMS brings an additional focus on hazard identification and controlling product safety risk for the benefit of aviation safety. Safety hazards and complex systems can be difficult to find, and the aviation industry has actually experienced system failures when all the individual components were complying to the quality standards. New learning can sometimes make what is considered conforming or acceptable today become unacceptable or not conforming tomorrow. From an SMS mindset, changes in the environment should be reviewed with a thought about potential safety hazards. This becomes the essence of SMS, to have employees being aware of how their processes could impact the safety of end users and then take initiative to identify, report, and mitigate those potential hazards proactively. SMS focuses on aviation safety beyond what a QMS can do alone. 

Susan Matson: [06:47 – 06:57] So given that commercial aviation continues to be the safest form of transportation, what is the motivation for SMS, Andrea? 

Andrea Bossi: [06:58 – 08:41] Well, it's a great question, Susan. Despite a few high profile events in the last several months, as you said, commercial aviation is the safest mode of transportation by far. Yet there is very low societal tolerance for any incident or accidents. Just think at the resonance they have compared with car crashes, which are by far more frequent. So the SMS is intended to be another enhancement for continual improvement, not only technical but cultural. Actually, there are several motivations for the SMS. including at first the statistical data, which indicates that despite being the commercial aviation the safest form of transport, yet facile accidents still occur. And these are not something that we want to accept, so we need to drive continuing improvement. Also the complexity of aviation system that continuously introduce new hazards and risks, which we might not be aware of, by the way. Then the performance of technical systems and human performance in implementing existing barriers, which tend to degrade with time. Maybe because of routine, norms, wear or fatigue, which overall reduce the control's effectiveness. And then the changes in terms of technology, operations, and the environment, that can introduce unnoticed threats, hazards, and risks. So in the end, the SMS can be viewed as another positive step, building upon a history of positive steps, including the introduction of the QMS, by the way, that will drive continued enhancement in aviation safety. 

Susan Matson: [08:42 – 08:50] Thank you, Andrea. What is the vision of this project team with respects to SMS and QMS? 

Thomas Enyart: [08:51 – 09:39] Well, Susan, by adding SMS as a topic to the SCMH document, we want to provide insights to enable product discussions and engagements that customers with a mandated SMS and their suppliers who are well versed in QMS can come together in collaboration. So by highlighting similarities and differences between the common methods and tools that we hope to enable the suppliers to more efficiently execute the necessary SMS related activities with some of the QMS procedures. So the intent is to help lessen any burden with the transition into an environment with mandated SMS methodologies. 

Susan Matson: [09:40 – 09:50] OK. So can we anticipate the future updates of, say, the 9100 series to include SMS, or I should say, more SMS-related topics and requirements? 

David McDermott: [09:51 – 11:03] The expectation is yes. The broader industry focus on SMS and the critical importance of the supply chain for product safety performance will drive the need for more clarity really around what are the expectations. So future 9100 series updates will likely contain additional details around these expectations. And you can look explicitly in the 8.1.3 product safety clause. Today in the IAQG 9110 document, you'll see a larger list of expectations around product safety SMS related expectations. These expectations have been described as essential elements for engaging with the broader industry safety management systems. And that list includes things like hazard identification, safety, risk assessments, management of change, training, and reporting. And what's really important for safety management systems is having a venue for employees to be able to report hazards through a confidential employee reporting method. So, those are things that can be anticipated. 

Susan Matson: [11:03 – 11:21] Thank you. So, first of all, I did want to remind everyone and say congratulations to this team because all of these materials that we're talking about today have just recently been published. So, Tom, I wanted to ask you, where is the SMS documentation found and available in the SCMH? 

Thomas Enyart: [11:22 – 13:20] Well, these documents, as you know, were in fact released on April the 15th of 2025. And in fact, there's three documents. So of the three documents, section 7.22.1 is a PowerPoint overview of the SMS and provides a summary of the supplier expectations. and how existing QMS can be utilized for SMS. It provides the methodology that we adopted. Section 7.22.2 is entitled Guidance for Suppliers or SMS Expectations, and it breaks down a list of those eight expectations that Dave was alluding to in the 9100 standard, 8.1.3. And it has A through H expectations of what, why, and how. That should be very useful for the suppliers to have a better understanding of those elements. And then if you recall the 9100 standard, referring to in the 8.1.3 safety clause, it had a list of expectations. And so the section 7.22.3 is titled Guidance for Leveraging QMS for SMS. In this document, our team mapped out the requirements of the ICAO SMS standard that came from ICAO Annex 19 to the IAQG 9100 QMS standard. And this matrix comparison is a very powerful reference to help organizations understand how they can utilize their existing tools and methods to be able to apply them in a manner that supports the SMS activity. 

Susan Matson: [13:20 – 13:32] Wow, that sounds like a lot of information that is now available to people. So what are, David, what are some of those key takeaways that we should be looking at when we're looking at all of this information? 

David McDermott: [13:33 – 15:19] Yeah, for starters, there are many ways to accomplish the expected safety-related activities. So we found that it's not a one-size-fits-all solution. Each organization is going to be a little different. That's our guidance material. As it breaks down, as Tom alluded to, the why and the what, having that clarity on those questions, why is this a requirement or expectation and what does it involve, Then each organization can find a solution that works for their situation. So in the 7.22.2 or 7.22.2 guides for suppliers and SMS expectations. The document intentionally defines a range of methods from the bare minimum essential activities, the higher level methods that could be appropriate for suppliers with higher complexity in their processes or more critical safety impact from their products or services. Another takeaway is there's a lot of overlap between quality management systems and safety management systems in terms of methods and tools. Risk-based thinking, for example, is very aligned with the SMS, Safety Risk Management, just with a focus on potential safety hazards. So the risk management tools promoted in QMS can be adapted with some small tweaks to be very inclusive of identifying safety hazards. And then I'll also add that we do see the need of this communication up and down the supply chain. So effective two-way communication between customers and suppliers on sharing the information that they know quite well. 

Susan Matson: [15:20 – 15:32] Andrea, it's my understanding that this isn't the end, right? There's more information to become, more information to share. So can you give our listeners what they can expect tomorrow, in the future? 

Andrea Bossi: [15:33 – 16:11] Well, yes, Susan, there is a series of webinars planned, by the way, including interactive sessions with questions and answers just to disseminate more and more the information on the SCMH and the SMS. This will be developed through 2025 and made available on the SCMH website David referred before. The webinar starts at the high level review of safety aviation history, and then move deep into the SMS and then into the supplier-specific information. Here you can hear about the perspective of industry experts explaining the SMS content and supplier expectations. 

Susan Matson: [16:12 – 16:41] Thank you, Andrea. And just as a reminder to everyone, this information can be found on the SCMH website at scmh.iaqg.org. And if you register on the site, you'll also get email notifications for those upcoming webinars that Andrea just mentioned. Gentlemen, thank you so much for today. I really appreciate it. And I know that our listeners do, too. This information should be a great resource for the entire supply chain. Thank you.  

David McDermott: [16:41 – 16:42] Thank you.  

Susan Matson: [16:42 – 16:49] This is Susan Matson, and you have been listening to The Quality Horizon. Until next time, stay safe.