Human reliability assessment (HRA) in maintenance of production process: a case study

Abstract

Human reliability has a high contribution in maintenance performance, safety, and cost efficiency of any production process. To improve human reliability, the causes of human errors should be identified and the probability of human errors should be quantified. Analysis of human error is very case specific in which the context of the field should be taken into account. The aim of this study is to identify the causes of human errors and, improve human reliability in maintenance activities in cable manufacturing industry. The central thrust of this paper is to employ the three most common HRA techniques -HEART (Human Error Assessment and Reduction Technique), SPAR-H (Standardized Plant Analysis Risk-Human Reliability), and BN (Bayesian Network) for estimating human error probabilities, and then to check the consistency of results obtained. The case study results demonstrated that the main causes of human error during maintenance activities are time pressure, lack of experience, and poor procedure. Moreover, the probabilities of human error obtained by employing the three techniques are almost similar and consistent.

Human Reliability Analysis (HRA) Using Standardized Plant Analysis Risk-Human (SPAR-H) and Bayesian Network (BN) for Pipeline Inspection Gauges (PIG) Operation: A Case Study in a Gas Transmission Plant

“…Where i is the parent set of variable X i . Based on this, the marginal probability is calculated from the following equation: (2)…”

“…The SPAR-H methodology estimates probability of human error using predefined expression based on PSF composite. The value of HEP depends on the PSFs levels (P (error | PSF [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. Considering this, to develop a CPT the number of probabilities will increase exponentially according to the number of parent nodes (45).…”

“…These infrastructures can be systems, resources, a process, or a combination of these elements; the failure or unavailability of these infrastructures can interrupt the normal operation and safety of an industry (1). Maintenance procedures in complex industries are vulnerable to human performance (2,3). Also, defects in human performance is one of the main reasons for accidents in maintenance operations of natu-ral gas and oil industries.…”

Assessment methods of production processes reliability – state of the art

“…work [57]). Issues of the risks associated with human factors analysis (Human Factor Reliability analysis) are summarized, among others, in [1,5,58]. Thus, based on the known literature, various approaches have been developed in order to assess and optimize the production processes performance.…”

“…Zagadnienia analizy zagrożeń związanych z czynnikiem ludzkim (Human Factor Reliability analysis) zostały podsumowane m.in. w pracach [1,5,58]. Jednocześnie, bazując na światowej literaturze, można zdefiniować różne podejścia opracowane w celu przeprowadzenia oceny i optymalizacji wydajności procesów produkcyjnych.…”