Just thought I'd share, In one of my trainings I've conducted last 2000, one person a maintenance manager ask me a question on what would be the best maintenance task for a UPS, I try to dwell for a while and said, I can't think of anything but have a redunduncy, he laughed at me and said that it was not a UPS for computer but for the whole plant, and I said if we can open the UPS for some inspection and he said that it will kill the whole plant. I try to answer with a question by telling him how much would you think will be the cost of having your whole plant shut down since the UPS was down and how much will be the cost of the UPS, getting the story short the consequences will far outweight the cost but still he told me that placing a redunduncy will be next to impossible and Top management will not approved it most specially that this plant is on a cost reduction loop. Anyway, a year had passed, and I resigned from teaching in this company, and just read on the newspapers that one of their plants caught fire, traceable to the UPS, I have the chance of talking to them again since I consult now on this plant and they told me that their UPS not only have a redunduncy but 3 UPS are now in place.

Should we need to hit ourselves with a stone in our head in order to make a right decision or should we need to something bad to happen before we act on it ?

We have covered so much discussion about reliability, weibull, and other strategies but I believe that every single failure can be attributed to a human error that prompts the failure to occur.

Human commit error, and we are not perfect even if we want to be one, even with the best policy and procedure, errors will still happen since this is human nature.

Any advise on human errors, flawed management decisions etc.,

Highly appreciate any feedback.

Rolly Angeles
Teacher

(P.S finally nearing my 100th post, just thought I get some couple of beers and celebrate,

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Rolly12,

Interesting story Rolly.... some years ago, Sydney airport experienced a total comms blackout on a Friday afternoon when the sparkies were doing tests of the UPS to the control tower. 20 planes in controlled airspace got quite a suprise to have to go visual and lose contact with the control tower.
Regards
Steve
www.pmoptimisation.com.au

Hi Rolly,

I am just in the process of relocating all of my files etcetera as I am settling into a new country.

However, once I do I have a range of documents on human error that may be of interest. (Will post these)

In terms of formal books I would strongly recommend anything written by James Reason.

Rolly,

This may be of interest to you.

Its title is "Human factors guidance for selecting appropriate maintenance strategies for
safety in the offshore oil and gas industry"

It was one of the many good documents sponsored by the Health and Safety Executive of the UK.

HSE_human_factors.pdf (684 Kb, 20 downloads) Human factors - Maintenance

Daryl,

Would you agree with me if I say that we can never eliminate human errors but only reduce them to some degree ?

My Warm Regards,

Rolly Angeles

Rolly,

I think that is some cases we can eliminate human error, while in other cases we can only take steps to reduce its liklihood.

There are a range of different categories of Human error... Cheers