It is late March 2020 and we have just been through 5 days that have changed lives around the world. The stock market dropped over 30% in 19 days. We went from attending movies in a theater to watching Netflix at home under shelter in place advisories. The underlying reason? An enemy not visible to the naked eye—with a diameter less than 200 nm—a coronavirus labeled COVID‐19. I cannot predict what will be the new norm when this editorial publicly appears in April or May 2020. However, here is what experience of the past predicts. The drop in the stock market will place pressures on lowering expenditures within large plants. The question you face is how to prioritize these demands? There is history of cutting in areas that compromise the process safety layers within the plant when the belt tightening requests comes about. Decision‐makers need to be reminded of Bhopal as the example, a plant under extreme financial pressure because in that situation only one‐third of the designed production could be sold. Safety systems were compromised to save money. This resulted in the dissolution of the seventh largest company in the world, 20 000 lives lost, and 200 000 affected by exposure to methyl isocyanate. As the cost‐cutting discussions begin, be mindful of Bhopal. Each safety layer interrupted, in the name of cost savings, increases several times the risk potential of an accident. Consider this analogy. We have a roulette wheel, with 41 choices, where one number is the accident and the remaining mean no accident. We can spin this wheel many times without an accident. Now we remove a layer of protection, which is similar to removing, say, 30 numbers from that roulette wheel. However, the one number associated with the accident remains. We increase our odds of an accident with each spin. We need to sharpen our pencils and understand our safety layers and the financial impact involved when we apply cost savings that alter these.

到2020年3月下旬，我们已经经历了5天的时间，改变了世界各地的生活。股市在19天之内下跌了30％以上。我们从在剧院看电影到在有庇护所的地方在家中观看Netflix。根本原因是什么？直径小于200 nm的肉眼看不见的敌人，冠状病毒标记为COVID-19。当这篇社论在2020年4月或5月公开发表时，我无法预测新的规范。但是，这是过去的经验所能预测的。股票市场的下跌将对大型工厂降低支出构成压力。您面临的问题是如何优先考虑这些需求？当安全带拉紧要求到来时，有切入区域会危害工厂内过程安全层的切割历史。需要提醒决策者以博帕尔为例，这是一家承受巨大财务压力的工厂，因为在这种情况下，只能出售三分之一的设计产品。安全系统受到损害以节省资金。这导致世界第七大公司解散，2万多人丧生，20万受到异氰酸甲酯的影响。随着削减成本的讨论开始，请注意博帕尔。以节省成本为名，被中断的每个安全层的事故风险增加了几倍。考虑这个比喻。我们有一个轮盘赌盘，有41个选择，其中一个数字是事故，其余数字表示无事故。我们可以多次旋转此轮而不会发生意外。现在，我们删除了一层保护，这类似于删除例如 轮盘赌的30个数字。但是，与事故相关的一个数字仍然存在。我们每次旋转都会增加发生事故的几率。当我们应用节省成本的方法来改变安全层时，我们需要削尖铅笔并了解我们的安全层和所涉及的财务影响。