Do you have any documentation on maintenance induced errors? I remember seeing a study from the late 1980s but none of us can find it any more. Your help is greatly appreciated.

Regards,


Michael L. Harazim
Project Development Manager
Framatome ANP, Inc.
An AREVA and Siemens company
Office: 704-805-2532
Mobile: 704-232-5738
e-mail: michael.harazim@framatome-anp.com

Dear Michael,

Some of the best work I have seen on Maintenance Induced errors comes from Mr james Reason who is an expert in the area of Human Error.

I personal;ly find all of his written works to be fascinating reading and paradigm changing concepts.

If you search Amazon under his name you will get a raft of books, including the latest which I think is called Human Error and maintenance.

Daryl Mather
www.strategic-advantages.com

Good topic: I think there are a large number of things that are incorporated into maintenance error where the guys pulling the wrenches get the blame but the real fault is in engineering.

Some use laser alignment (single beam method) without indexing. They go through the alignment process but the end results are poor or bad.

Same with soft foot: using the same approach for all methods and all machines incorporates softfoot into machines even though the techs went through the soft foot removal process.

I had a case history where a 6312 bearing was OEM design. But from poor installation and maintenance not recognizing poor installation opted for a C3 fit - with paying closer attention with extra people they did a better installation job but gave credit to the bearing although the extra life was little more. Next time the rebuild and installation was 'normal' and life was shorter, so, they were scratching their head and blaming it on weather (no joke).

There are a ton of these.

Focusing only on maint-induced error will only represent one third of the total picture. In our maint guide, as a starting point, the errors or problems are almost evenly attributed to operations (40%), technical (30%) and maintenance (30%) which I guess to encourage cross-fucntional teamwork and equal participation in resolving the plant problems in a holistic manner rather than in a piece meal approach.

It should be noted recently there has been new developments saying that a large percentage of problems are operations-related rather than maintenance and technical related once infant mortality has been resolved. This school of thought has led to operator-based or operations-managed reliability program. In fact I read one article where a well-known bearing vendor states that "nothing much maintenance can do alone without the involvement of operations".

I hope we should address human errors in general rather than just those errors associated with maintenance.

So what do you guys think? TQ