Abstract
Human errors aren’t uncommon in maintenance operations to disrupt the scheduled maintenance tasks with adverse consequences on equipment, personnel, or environment. Yet, human error can’t be simply detected during maintenance operation (only after the commissioning). The consequences for such unintended errors may be drastic in petrochemical industries especially under severe operation conditions. The purpose of this study is to explore root cause analysis for human errors in Preventive Maintenance (PM) activities in petrochemical industry. The paper collects the data of poor maintenance incidents from ERP system in one of the largest oil and gas facilities in Saudi Arabia. The incidents analysis indicates 103 failure caused by human errors during the analysis periods from year 2010 till 2019. The findings show that lacking in quality assurance and quality control program is the main cause to have repetitive human failures in PM tasks. Accordingly, a Markov-based model is developed to simulate the improvement effect of having quality assurance and quality control programs as part of the PM tasks. Interestingly, the availability of the equipment is improved by 20% with the quality assurance program and the probability to have human errors dropped to less than 5%.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aalipour M, Ayele YZ, Barabadi A (2016) Human reliability assessment (HRA) in maintenance of production process: a case study. Int J Syst Assur Eng Manag 7:229–238
Ajmi AA, Mahmood NS, Jamaludin KR, Talib HHA, Sarip S, & Kaidi HBM (2021) An efficient framework for identifying current open issues to prevent human errors in maintaining power plants: Research gap. Materials Today: Proceedings
Asadzadeh SM, Azadeh A (2014) An integrated systemic model for optimization of condition-based maintenance with human error. Reliab Eng Syst Saf 124:117–131
Bao M, Ding S (2014) Individual-related factors and management-related factors in aviation maintenance. Procedia Eng 80:293–302
Bashiri M, Badri H, Hejazi TH (2011) Selecting optimum maintenance strategy by fuzzy interactive linear assignment method. Appl Math Model 35:152–164
Besnard D, Hollnagel E (2012) Some myths about industrial safety
Bhavsar P, Srinivasan B, Srinivasan R (2016) Pupillometry based real-time monitoring of operator’s cognitive workload to prevent human error during abnormal situations. Ind Eng Chem Res 55:3372–3382
Chernobyl Nuclear Accident, Resources, News updates | IAEA [WWW Document], n.d. URL https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/focus/chernobyl (accessed 11.27.20)
Dhillon BS (2014) Human factors in power plant maintenance. In: Human reliability, error, and human factors in power generation. Springer, pp 123–133
Dhillon BS (2009) Human reliability, error, and human factors in engineering maintenance: with reference to aviation and power generation. CRC press, Boca Raton
Di Pasquale V, Miranda S, Iannone R, Riemma S (2015) An HRA-based simulation model for the optimization of the rest breaks configurations in human-intensive working activities. IFAC-Pap 48:332–337
Dole E, Scannell GF (1990) Phillips 66 company Houston chemical complex explosion and fire: a report to the president. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, US Department of Labor
Eti MC, Ogaji SOT, Probert SD (2006) Strategic maintenance-management in Nigerian industries. Appl Energy 83:211–227
Fingas M (2016) Oil spill science and technology. Gulf professional publishing, Houston
Franciosi C, Lambiase A, Miranda S (2017) Sustainable maintenance: a periodic preventive maintenance model with sustainable spare parts management. IFAC-Pap 50:13692–13697
Fruggiero F, Riemma S, Ouazene Y, Macchiaroli R, Guglielmi V (2016) Incorporating the human factor within manufacturing dynamics. IFAC-Pap 49:1691–1696
Graeber, R.C., 1993. Reducing human error in aircraft maintenance operations.
González-Domínguez J, Sánchez-Barroso G, García-Sanz-Calcedo J (2020) Scheduling of Preventive Maintenance in Healthcare Buildings Using Markov Chain. Appl Sci 10(15):5263
Kim J, Park J, Jung W, Kim JT (2009) Characteristics of test and maintenance human errors leading to unplanned reactor trips in nuclear power plants. Nucl Eng Des 239:2530–2536
Kumar P, Gupta S, Gunda YR (2020) Estimation of human error rate in underground coal mines through retrospective analysis of mining accident reports and some error reduction strategies. Saf Sci 123:104555
Liang G-F, Lin J-T, Hwang S-L, Wang EM, Patterson P (2010) Preventing human errors in aviation maintenance using an on-line maintenance assistance platform. Int J Ind Ergon 40:356–367
Macchi M, Farruku K, Holgado M, Negri E, Panarese D (2016) Economic and environmental impact assessment through system dynamics of technology-enhanced maintenance services. Int J Ind Syst Eng 23:36–56
Marais KB, Robichaud MR (2012) Analysis of trends in aviation maintenance risk: an empirical approach. Reliab Eng Syst Saf 106:104–118
Maik JA, Havinga BJ (2019) Condition-Based maintenance in the cyclic patrolling repairman problem. Int J Prod Econ 222:107497
Morais C, Yung KL, Johnson K, Moura R, Beer M, Patelli E (2022) Identification of human errors and influencing factors: a machine learning approach. Saf Sci 146:105528
Moreno-Trejo J, Kumar R, Markeset T (2012) Factors influencing the installation and maintenance of subsea petroleum production equipment. J Qual Maint Eng 18:454–471
Liu M, Tang P, Liao PC, Xu L (2020) Propagation mechanics from workplace hazards to human errors with dissipative structure theory. Saf Sci 126:104661
Noroozi A, Khan F, MacKinnon S, Amyotte P, Deacon T (2014) Determination of human error probabilities in maintenance procedures of a pump. Process Saf Environ Prot 92:131–141
Okoh P, Haugen S (2014) A study of maintenance-related major accident cases in the 21st century. Process Saf Environ Prot 92:346–356
Papic L, Kovacevic S, Galar D, Thaduri A (2016) Investigation of causes of mining machines maintenance problems. In: Current trends in reliability, availability, maintainability and safety. Springer, pp 283–299
PAYNE T (2010) Offshore operations and maintenance: a growing market. Pet Econ Engl Ed 77:18
Raouf A, Duffuaa S, Ben-Daya M, Dhillon BS, Liu Y (2006) Human error in maintenance: a review. J Qual Maint Eng 12:21–36
Rashid HSJ, Place CS, Braithwaite GR (2013) Investigating the investigations: a retrospective study in the aviation maintenance error causation. Cogn Technol Work 15:171–188
Sammarco M, Fruggiero F, Neumann WP, Lambiase A (2014) Agent-based modelling of movement rules in DRC systems for volume flexibility: human factors and technical performance. Int J Prod Res 52:633–650
Savino MM, Macchi M, Mazza A (2015) Investigating the impact of social sustainability within maintenance operations. J Qual Maint Eng 21:310–331
Senders JW, Moray NP (2020) Human error: Cause, prediction, and reduction. CRC Press
Sheikhalishahi M, Pintelon L, Azadeh A (2016) Human factors in maintenance: a review. J Qual Maint Eng 22:18–237
Vaughan A (2003) Tracks to disaster
Vinnem JE, Bye R, Gran BA, Kongsvik T, Nyheim OM, Okstad EH, Seljelid J, Vatn J (2012) Risk modelling of maintenance work on major process equipment on offshore petroleum installations. J Loss Prev Process Ind 25:274–292
Ung ST (2019) Evaluation of human error contribution to oil tanker collision using fault tree analysis and modified fuzzy Bayesian Network based CREAM. Ocean Eng 179:159–172
Weng J, Yang D, Chai T, Fu S (2019) Investigation of occurrence likelihood of human errors in shipping operations. Ocean Eng 182:28–37
Yazgan E, Delice EK (2021) Hybrid human error assessment approach for critical aircraft maintenance practice in the training aircraft. Int J Aerosp Psychol 32(2–3):114–137
Ye X, Chen B, Lee K, Storesund R, Zhang B (2020) An integrated offshore oil spill response decision making approach by human factor analysis and fuzzy preference evaluation. Environ Pollut 262:114294
Acknowledgements
The authors thank King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals for the support and facilities that made this research possible.
Funding
No external funding is received for this research work.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflicts of interest
There are no conflicts of interest declared by any of the authors.
Ethical approval
There are no studies with human participants or animals conducted by any of the authors in this article.
Informed consent
All individual participants in the study provided informed consent.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Hadidi, L.A., Ghaithan, A., Mohammed, A. et al. A Markov-based model to mitigate human errors occurrence during maintenance activities in petrochemical systems. Int J Syst Assur Eng Manag 14, 2146–2159 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13198-023-02045-5
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13198-023-02045-5