Overview of the Risk Matrix Module
The Risk Matrix, which can be accessed in various places throughout the GE Digital APM application, is
used to evaluate mitigated and unmitigated risk in various contexts.
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2020 General Electric Company
Chapter
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Risk and Risk Assessment
Topics:
•
About Risk and Risk
Assessment
•
Specify Risk Values to
Determine an Overall Risk Rank
•
Specify That a Risk Category
Does Not Apply to the Current
Risk
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2020 General Electric Company
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About Risk and Risk Assessment
In GE Digital APM, risk is the combination of a harmful event or condition and its negative outcome. In
addition to identifying risks, in GE Digital APM, you can also perform a risk assessment, which assesses:
• The probability that the negative outcome will have an impact on safety, the environment, operations,
or finances.
• The severity of the safety, environmental, operational, or financial impact.
In some GE Digital APM modules, you will assess risk using the Risk Matrix. In other modules, you will
assess risk using datasheets or other forms. Keep in mind that the type of impact that each module
allows you to assess might differ. For example, Asset Strategy Optimization (ASO) allows you to assess
safety, environmental, and operational impact. Asset Strategy Management (ASM), on the other hand,
allows you to assess safety, environmental, operational, and financial impact.
More About Risk
In any company, equipment and locations can fail. In some cases, these failures do not cause any
immediate problems. For instance, consider a clothes dryer with a switch that shuts off the dryer
automatically if the temperature inside the drum reaches 180 degrees Fahrenheit (F). If the switch stops
working but the temperature never reaches 180 degrees F, meaning that the switch is never activated, the
switch failure would not present any problems.
In other cases, however, a failure can cause not only problematic but catastrophic consequences.
Consider the same clothes dryer and safety switch. If the safety switch stops working and the
temperature inside the drum does reach 180 degrees F, the switch will not perform its intended function:
shutting off the dryer. Instead, the dryer would continue to run, allowing the temperature to potentially
rise even further, which could ultimately cause the dryer to catch on fire.
From this example, you can see that the safety switch failure is problematic because it could cause a fire,
which would have safety, financial, and operational impacts.
In GE Digital APM, a risk is the combination of a harmful event or condition and the negative outcome of
that event or condition. In the example described above:
• The switch failure is the harmful event.
• A fire is the negative outcome.
So, the risk in this example is the combination of the switch failure and the negative outcome. In other
words, the risk is that the switch stops working and the dryer overheats, eventually causing a fire.
To perform a risk assessment of this situation, you would consider:
• The probability that the fire will have a safety, environmental, operational, or financial impact. For
example, you might determine that an operational impact is inevitable, while an environmental impact
is possible but not likely.
• The severity of the safety, environmental, operational, or financial impact. For example, you might
determine that the severity of a safety impact is very high (homeowners could be killed), but the
severity of an environmental impact is low (damage only to immediate, surrounding landscaping).
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2020 General Electric Company