scholarly journals Causes and Impact of Human Error in Maintenance of Mechanical Systems

2020 ◽  
Vol 312 ◽  
pp. 05001
Author(s):  
Mfundo Nkosi ◽  
Kapil Gupta ◽  
Madindwa Mashinini

The concept of minimizing human error in maintenance is progressively gaining attention in various industries. The incorporation of human factors when solving engineering problems, particularly in maintenance, can no longer be ignored where high standards of performance are expected. The journey of improving maintenance performance through the reduction of human error begins with the understanding of causes and impact of human error in maintenance. This paper evaluates previous scholarly writings on human errors, to specifically establish the causes and impact of human error in maintenance. This study relies predominantly on the existing literature on human error in maintenance derived from published and unpublished research. The primary findings emerging from the research exhibit a number of key factors that cause a human error in maintenance such as poor management and supervision, organizational culture, incompetence, poorly written procedures, poor communication, time pressure, plant and environmental conditions, poor work design and many more. The literature review also revealed that human errors have a negative impact on safety, reliability, productivity and efficiency of the equipment. It was further discovered that equipment failures leading to accidents, incidents, loss of life and economic losses are the major effects of human error. Human error in mechanical systems’ maintenance is a serious problem which needs adequate attention in order to develop corrective and preventive measures. This review paper serves as a basis for maintenance practitioners and interested parties to develop corrective and preventive measures for minimizing human error in the maintenance of mechanical systems.

Author(s):  
Sarbjeet Singh ◽  
Arnab Majumdar ◽  
Miltos Kyriakidis

Human errors occurring during railway maintenance activities can significantly reduce the availability of equipment. Identification of potential human errors, their causes and prediction of the associated probabilities are important stages in order to manage such errors. This paper investigates the probability of human error during the maintenance of railway bogies. A case study examines technicians performing maintenance on the disc brake assembly unit, wheel set, and bogie frame under various error producing conditions in a railway maintenance workshop in Luleå, Sweden. The Human Error Assessment and Reduction Technique (HEART) is employed to determine the probability of human error occurring during each of the maintenance tasks, while fault tree analysis is used to define the potential errors throughout the maintenance process. The probability of a technician committing an error during the maintenance of the disc brake assembly, wheel set, and bogie frame is found to be 0.20, 0.039 and 0.021 respectively, with the human error probability (HEP) for the entire bogie 0.24. Time pressure, ability to detect and perceive problems, over-riding information, the need to make decisions and mismatches between the operator and designer’s model turn out to be major contributors to human error. These findings can help maintenance management personnel to better understand the error producing conditions that may lead to errors and in turn serve as an input to modify policies and guidelines for railway maintenance tasks.


Author(s):  
Alan Hobbs ◽  
Ann Williamson

In recent years cognitive error models have provided insights into the unsafe acts that lead to many accidents in safety-critical environments. Most models of accident causation are based on the notion that human errors occur in the context of contributing factors. However, there is a lack of published information on possible links between specific errors and contributing factors. A total of 619 safety occurrences involving aircraft maintenance were reported using a self-completed questionnaire. Of these occurrences, 96% were related to the actions of maintenance personnel. The types of errors that were involved, and the contributing factors associated with those actions, were determined. Each type of error was associated with a particular set of contributing factors and with specific occurrence outcomes. Among the associations were links between memory lapses and fatigue and between rule violations and time pressure. Potential applications of this research include assisting with the design of accident prevention strategies, the estimation of human error probabilities, and the monitoring of organizational safety performance.


Animals ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 2063
Author(s):  
Awad A. Shehata ◽  
Shereen Basiouni ◽  
Reinhard Sting ◽  
Valerij Akimkin ◽  
Marc Hoferer ◽  
...  

Poult enteritis and mortality syndrome (PEMS) is one of the most significant problem affecting turkeys and continues to cause severe economic losses worldwide. Although the specific causes of PEMS remains unknown, this syndrome might involve an interaction between several causative agents such as enteropathogenic viruses (coronaviruses, rotavirus, astroviruses and adenoviruses) and bacteria and protozoa. Non-infectious causes such as feed and management are also interconnected factors. However, it is difficult to determine the specific cause of enteric disorders under field conditions. Additionally, similarities of clinical signs and lesions hamper the accurate diagnosis. The purpose of the present review is to discuss in detail the main viral possible causative agents of PEMS and challenges in diagnosis and control.


Author(s):  
Goran Alpsten

This paper is based on the experience from investigating over 400 structural collapses, incidents and serious structural damage cases with steel structures which have occurred over the past four centuries. The cause of the failures is most often a gross human error rather than a combination of “normal” variations in parameters affecting the load-carrying capacity, as considered in normal design procedures and structural reliability analyses. Human errors in execution are more prevalent as cause for the failures than errors in the design process, and the construction phase appears particularly prone to human errors. For normal steel structures with quasi-static (non-fatigue) loading, various structural instability phenomena have been observed to be the main collapse mode. An important observation is that welds are not as critical a cause of structural steel failures for statically loaded steel structures as implicitly understood in current regulations and rules for design and execution criteria.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Xianchun Zhang ◽  
Zhu Yao ◽  
Wan Qunchao ◽  
Fu-Sheng Tsai

Purpose Time pressure is the most common kind of work pressure that employees face in the workplace; the existing research results on the effect of time pressure are highly controversial (positive, negative, inverted U-shaped). Especially in the era of knowledge economy, there remains a research gap in the impact of time pressure on individual knowledge hiding. The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of different time pressure (challenge and hindrance) on knowledge hiding and to explain why there is controversy about the effect of time pressure in the academics. Design/methodology/approach The authors collected two waves of data and surveyed 341 R&D employees in China. Moreover, they used regression analysis, bootstrapping and Johnson–Neyman statistical technique to verify research hypotheses. Findings The results show that challenge time pressure (CTP) has a significant negative effect on knowledge hiding, whereas hindrance time pressure (HTP) has a significant positive effect on knowledge hiding; job security mediates the relationship between time pressure and knowledge hiding; temporal leadership strengthen the positive impact of CTP on job security; temporal leadership can mitigate the negative impact of HTP on job security. Originality/value The findings not only respond to the academic debate about the effect of time pressure and point out the reasons for the controversy but also enhance the scholars’ attention and understanding of the internal mechanism between time pressure and knowledge hiding.


2021 ◽  
pp. 36-39
Author(s):  
K. Srinivasan ◽  
S. Rajarajeswari

Banking system plays a major role in development of economy. Due to the advent of digital technology, banking has undergone a massive shift in its mode of operations. Banks have been already offering a wide variety of products and services, integrated with technology and automation, the most familiar being ATM machines all around us. New trends articial intelligence in banking sectors are gaining momentum at a fast pace as it reduces the human error and increases the efciency of operations of the banks. At the same time, this digital technology has paved way for both positive and negative impact on operations of the banks. One such activity is money laundering. such phenomenon has occupied a signicant position in the global policy agenda, in addition to other issues such as international terrorism. It is worthwhile to be mentioned that money laundering operations form a heavy burden on different countries in the world, which in their turn are looking for the best means to ght and limit them. It is well known that banks are one of the most important pillars of money laundering and its ghting at the same time, since most of money laundering is made through banks, which makes them perfectly suitable means to do such operations. Articial intelligence has been deployed by banks to reduce such operations. This study emphasis on application of articial intelligence in money laundering in banks and its efciency in controlling the operations of Banks.


2011 ◽  
Vol 97-98 ◽  
pp. 825-830 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yong Tao Xi ◽  
Chong Guo

Safety is the eternal theme in shipping industry. Research shows that human error is the main reason of maritime accidents. Therefore, it is very necessary to research marine human errors, to discuss the contexts which caused human errors and how the contexts effect human behavior. Based on the detailed investigation of human errors in collision avoidance behavior which is the most key mission in navigation and the Performance Shaping Factors (PSFs), human reliability of mariners in collision avoidance was analyzed by using the integration of APJE and SLIM. Result shows that this combined method is effective and can be used for the research of maritime human reliability.


Author(s):  
Lukman Irshad ◽  
Salman Ahmed ◽  
Onan Demirel ◽  
Irem Y. Tumer

Detection of potential failures and human error and their propagation over time at an early design stage will help prevent system failures and adverse accidents. Hence, there is a need for a failure analysis technique that will assess potential functional/component failures, human errors, and how they propagate to affect the system overall. Prior work has introduced FFIP (Functional Failure Identification and Propagation), which considers both human error and mechanical failures and their propagation at a system level at early design stages. However, it fails to consider the specific human actions (expected or unexpected) that contributed towards the human error. In this paper, we propose a method to expand FFIP to include human action/error propagation during failure analysis so a designer can address the human errors using human factors engineering principals at early design stages. To explore the capabilities of the proposed method, it is applied to a hold-up tank example and the results are coupled with Digital Human Modeling to demonstrate how designers can use these tools to make better design decisions before any design commitments are made.


2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 228-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jong Woo Kang ◽  
Suzette Dagli

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that higher tariffs under protectionism will have significant indirect impact through industrial forward and backward linkages, causing greater economic losses to tariff-imposing economies than to exporting countries. Design/methodology/approach The authors use partial equilibrium analysis based on unique multi-regional input-output (IO) data in measuring the second-round spillover effects of higher tariffs, also investigating the scenario of plausible substitutability across import sources as well as sectors based on historical import intensity data. Findings Higher tariffs do not only have a direct impact, but also a significant indirect impact—through forward and backward linkages. Indirect effects can be extensive across economies and sectors—both in forward and backward linkages such as in transport—when value chains are longer and more complex. When possible substitution effects between different import sources and sectors are considered, negative forward linkage effects can be smaller, while negative backward linkage effects become more pronounced. Nevertheless, both negative effects are still found to be much bigger in indirect impacts compared with direct impacts. Research limitations/implications This implies that higher tariffs, including administrative trade measures such as anti-dumping duties and countervailing duties could ironically entail rather greater negative impact on the tariff-imposing importing economies by damaging their exports of domestic sectors using the targeted imports as intermediate inputs, which could be severe if the importing sector has a long value chain in particular through deep forward linkages. Originality/value This paper uses unique multi-regional IO data covering 45 economies’ 35 sectors in analyzing the second-round spillover effects across countries and sectors and employs comparative statics under different scenarios.


Author(s):  
Zacarias Grande Andrade ◽  
Enrique Castillo Ron ◽  
Alan O'Connor ◽  
Maria Nogal

A Bayesian network approach is presented for probabilistic safety analysis (PSA) of railway lines. The idea consists of identifying and reproducing all the elements that the train encounters when circulating along a railway line, such as light and speed limit signals, tunnel or viaduct entries or exits, cuttings and embankments, acoustic sounds received in the cabin, curves, switches, etc. In addition, since the human error is very relevant for safety evaluation, the automatic train protection (ATP) systems and the driver behavior and its time evolution are modelled and taken into account to determine the probabilities of human errors. The nodes of the Bayesian network, their links and the associated probability tables are automatically constructed based on the line data that need to be carefully given. The conditional probability tables are reproduced by closed formulas, which facilitate the modelling and the sensitivity analysis. A sorted list of the most dangerous elements in the line is obtained, which permits making decisions about the line safety and programming maintenance operations in order to optimize them and reduce the maintenance costs substantially. The proposed methodology is illustrated by its application to several cases that include real lines such as the Palencia-Santander and the Dublin-Belfast lines.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4995/CIT2016.2016.3428


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