There seems to be, in some people’s eyes, a dichotomy between safety and productivity.
The former is regarded as a compliance issue – a chore, a headache, an imposition – a drain on productivity.
Of course it partly depends on how safety is treated as an issue. Those who have used poka-yoke as an error-reducing technique will realise that it can also be used as an accident-reducing technique … so that it makes a process both safer and more productive at the same time. In fact this is the best way to address safety – every time we reduce the chance of an accident or other safety incident, we reduce value losses.
So it is definitely not a case of ‘either/or’ but a vase of ‘both together’ – making what we do both safer and more productive. Any other approach is unthinkable.