A NOVEL FRAMEWORK FOR IMPROVED MAINTENANCE ENGINEERING DECISION MAKING BY THE FUSION OF PROBABILISTIC TECHNIQUES FOR HUMAN AND HARDWARE AVAILABILITY ASSESSMENT

Human errors are major contributors to the overall risk in industry. 80% of marine fatalities and shipping accidents are caused by human errors. Human errors, additionally, are often a root or significant cause of a system failure which could lead to tremendous financial losses. Currently, most industries leverage the latest technologies in order to maximise the availability and reliability of their equipment and minimise human intervention. However, the human role is still vital in different phases of a plant life cycle, especially during maintenance. Traditional Reliability, Availability and Maintainability (RAM) methodology, which is a well-known methodology for optimising maintenance strategies in an organization, does not consider human error and the analysis of human reliability. Therefore, the aim of this research is to develop a novel framework for improved maintenance engineering decision making which can be achieved by the fusion of probabilistic techniques for human and hardware availability assessment. This study uses the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) Risk-Based Approach for Human Reliability Assessment (HRA) in Maintenance Engineering. The proposed framework has a systematic process which helps analysts, engineers and decision-makers to consider and manage risk in a complex system effectively. A publicly available case study in an oil and gas offshore platform of a maintenance procedure which includes removing and returning a piece of process equipment from service has been selected as an example for demonstration purposes. The final value of risk, which is known as Human Error Probability (HEP), is calculated by the Human Error Assessment and Reduction Technique (HEART) and then assigned to each activity and compared against a novel HEP risk matrix. If the level of HEP is not as low as reasonably practicable (ALARP), human error management regime is provided to eliminate or reduce the risk.