The importance of learning from past experience.

While technology may change, people do not—they often make the same errors as earlier generations. Unfortunately, people forget the lessons of the past and allow the same failures to happen again. Furthermore, large organisations of people have no memory whatsoever. This paper describes some examples of recurring failures in the process industry, most of which have resulted in accidents and most of which could have been prevented if people were more aware of past experience. Suggestions for improving the documentation and dissemination of past failures are given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]