Aviation has long operated on the principle that safety is not an outcome but a discipline: a structured, living system embedded in every decision, process and person. In the domain of flight operations and maintenance, safety management systems have been a regulatory cornerstone for years. But a new frontier opened more recently in the regulatory environment overseen by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) when safety management system requirements were extended to initial airworthiness and production organizations in March 2025.
For both large and small manufacturers supplying the aerospace industry, safety management systems (SMS) are far more than a compliance exercise. The concept is a fundamental shift in how safety is understood, owned and operationalized across different organizations and complex and highly interdependent supply chains.
In practice, introducing an SMS impacts several aspects of aerospace manufacturing, from the early stages of regulatory preparation and organization-wide training through to the integration of safety data with quality management and the cultivation of a safety culture on the production floor. The experience of tier one supplier FACC, which designs, supplies and maintains lightweight aerostructures, illustrates both the complexity and the opportunity that SMS brings to aerospace manufacturing.
Implementation journey
According to Patrizia Schultes, safety manager at FACC, the new regulation mandating SMS in the context of initial airworthiness had been on the horizon for some years: “Overall, the journey to SMS has been long, but in terms of initial airworthiness, only a few years have passed. During this time, we began training the core team to implement the SMS. Starting from this foundation, we followed the regulation and defined all the necessary specifications, processes and tools. A two-year transition period ended in March 2025. Before then, we conducted our usual periodic audits, which covered processes, training, policies and everything associated with SMS.”
A major tenet of SMS is understanding that risks rarely arise from isolated errors, but rather from a gradual shift in perspective, where subtle deviations from daily routines become the new accepted norm. Schultes says, “We focus on hazards such as the omission of intermediate process steps, insufficient knowledge transfer related to new or updated processes or the reduction of standardized processes, that might otherwise go unnoticed.
“To mitigate these risks, our SMS synthesizes data from easily accessible reporting platforms, audits and direct feedback from the production floor. We view safety performance indicators, such as overtime trends or error rates, as critical leading indicators, allowing us to intervene before a supposedly standard practice turns into an event.”
FACC employs around 4,000 people, so after the SMS was approved, training required a major initiative. “Since the implementation in March 2025, we have been analyzing internal matters while simultaneously monitoring external events to assess if they could impact safety, from an engineering, maintenance and production perspective,” says Schultes.
“Our reporting system allows employees and colleagues to voluntarily and confidentially report events that occur in their work areas. This is the primary mechanism through which we manage safety. We have also established our own Safety Centre and considerable work has been done to implement it.”
At FACC, the SMS is integrated through a digital reporting platform, ensuring that safety-related data and activities flow as effectively as possible across various organizational areas.
Schultes says, “A key element of this integration is our audit system, in which results are systematically entered into the SMS to trigger preventive actions, before risks manifest themselves at the operational level.”
FACC has found that the main challenge lies not in the technical interface, but in the methodological integration of quality and safety.
“We ensure that both systems are integrated yet well-defined, allowing us to identify which quality deviations pose safety risks and vice versa, ensuring that appropriate corrective measures translate into processes within quality management or other systems,” Schultes says.
Human factors
An integral part of the internal training routine, human factors considerations are constantly updated, based on identified safety risks. “The Safety Centre, operating within the FACC Academy, serves as a central hub for strengthening safety awareness through interactive training courses and specific case studies for all our personnel. It strengthens individual responsibility, recognizing that the human factor is the decisive element in safety,” says Schultes.
“Special attention is paid to the role of management in influencing the work environment,” she adds. “Specific risks, such as fatigue and information loss, are managed through shift handovers with personnel overlap and work models developed with occupational psychologists. Periodic safety reviews provide insights for further necessary adjustments, taking human factors into account,” Schultes says.
Every employee goes through the Safety Centre, with new hires introduced to safety content through an interactive experience at an Advocacy Centre that helps them integrate the information into their daily work, she says.
Schultes says, “We receive a lot of positive feedback from front-line personnel, those directly involved in production, about their involvement with SMS. The system creates a sense of empowerment. People feel they are part of a single team and can make a difference together. The cultural shift takes time, but we can already see the first results of this initiative and the commitment to living by these values.
“People interact with the system, which is becoming increasingly ingrained in their mindset because we actively and intensively promote it, integrating it into every aspect of our work. Employees are actively involved in the analysis and lessons learned, and we keep them constantly informed about our activities.”
Data and interventions
Safety data are translated into concrete actions through a structured analysis process. Risks are assessed by safety action teams and overseen by the safety review board, ensuring that safety decisions remain independent of production pressures. All stakeholders are involved, with the aim of achieving a shared understanding of the influencing factors. Systemic improvements, such as process redesign, can take several weeks or months.
However, high-severity risks trigger immediate interventions, such as suspending operations or making rapid procedural changes. These can be implemented in a matter of days or even hours.“Well-defined analysis processes, open risk communication and strong involvement of affected departments ensure that continuous improvement initiatives are accepted and implemented,” says Schultes.
“We have also created an entire company magazine dedicated to the topic of safety, primarily to raise awareness and promote the topic among our customers, and to illustrate how important we consider it.”
A model for safety
Data from FACC’s annual financial report indicates a measurable reduction in work-related accidents following SMS implementation. The number of recorded accidents decreased from 67 in 2024 to 50 in 2025, reflecting a clear downward trend coinciding with the introduction of the SMS.
While multiple factors may contribute to such improvements, this reduction offers a tangible indication of the positive impact that a structured, organization-wide approach to safety management can deliver.
FACC’s experience offers a powerful illustration of what SMS maturity can look like in a production environment. What began as a regulatory obligation has evolved into a structured, organization-wide commitment to identifying hazards before they become events, and to treating safety as a shared responsibility rather than a management directive. Bridging the gap between quality and safety, and sustaining engagement beyond initial implementation are challenges that any production organization will recognize. The cultural shift, in which employees feel empowered to contribute to safety, takes sustained investment and visible leadership. When implemented with genuine intent, SMS can become one of the most powerful levers for operational excellence available to an organization in the aerospace supply chain.
For the wider industry, the question now is how quickly and how seriously to embrace the cultural transformation that SMS requires.
