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

Human reliability makes a considerable contribution to the 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; 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 the cable manufacturing industry. The central thrust of this paper is to employ the three most common HRA techniques—human error assessment and reduction technique, standardized plant analysis risk-human reliability, and Bayesian network—for estimating human error probabilities and then to check the consistency of the 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 similar and consistent.