Reliability & Safety

Of late, been reading a few articles on "Reliability and Safety ". What are their properties, how are they correlated, do they have a cause-and-effect relationship and so on. While reading all this, a question dawned on me. Do we talk about reliability in the same way we do about safety?? Is it ubiquitous as safety is??. Ask anyone in a plant, “who is responsible for safety?” You are most likely to hear, “everybody, from the cleaner to the maintenance tech to the CEO.”

Now ask, “who is responsible for the reliability of the plant?” You will likely get a variety of different answers, but it will not likely be, “everybody”. But shouldn't it be? As we say reliability and safety is a 'system' property and it relies heavily on its interconnected/inter-depended components. From asset design, procurement, installation, risk management, operations and maintenance—everybody who touches the system—they are all responsible for reliability. But we have often treated reliability like it’s part of the maintenance group not a critical function of the entire organization.
As they say -"A reliable plant is a safe plant and a safe plant is a reliable plant". They go hand-in-hand. Shouldn't we start saying that 'reliability' is the responsibility of 'EVERYONE'?

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