Towards a proactive safety approach in the design process: The case of printing machinery

The paper describes the theoretical advances made in the project PROSPER, a collaboration between research groups and an industrial printing machinery manufacturer. It analyses how a design changes through the conception, installation and use stages and how this introduces activities which cross the boundary of safe behaviour, but are tolerated by the users as effective ways of meeting production and other goals. These boundary activities tolerated by use (BATU) are described and categorised and traced back to the design and management conditions which shape them through their processes and criteria. It describes possible aids to designers to predict and counter these migrations, which would supplement the reliance on the very static checking of designs against design standards.