How to reduce human error

Human error is inevitable.?

People WILL make mistakes.??

In fact, some of the best people in your organisation can make the WORST mistakes.??

This is something we simply can't avoid.? ?

But it is something we can improve!? ?

We can reduce human error!?

In the book, “Managing Maintenance Error: A Practical Guide” by James Reason and Alan Hobbs, they outline a number of principles that a maintenance quality management system should be focused on.??

I'm not going to go into all of them here.??

Instead, I will just pick out a few that really resonate with our discussion about human error.?

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#1: You cannot change the human condition. But you can change the conditions in which humans work.??

There are two parts to an error:? ??

1. our mental state;??
2. the physical situation we're in.??

We have limited control over people's mental states. ? ?

But we can control the environment they are working in.?

That could be good lighting, good access to equipment, or maybe proper climate control if a technician is working in an indoor workshop.??

These are the things we have control over.?

And we should make sure they are in good order.?

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#2: The best people can make the worst mistakes?

No one is immune to error.??

Everybody makes mistakes.??

If only a few people were responsible for most of the errors, then the solution would be simple, right???

But some of the worst mistakes are made by some of the most experienced people.?

And this is why you need to make sure your procedures always contain the necessary information that even your most experienced technicians would need to follow them.?

…especially for higher risk activities!?

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#3: People cannot easily avoid actions they did not intend to commit?

Blame and punishment aren’t appropriate when people's intentions were good… but the actions did not go as planned.??

It doesn't mean however, that people shouldn't be held accountable for their actions.??

What it really means is, we should be giving our people a chance to learn from their mistakes. And collectively as an organisation, we should be learning from our mistakes too.?

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#4: Errors are consequences, rather than causes? ? I really like this one. ? ? It’s so simple, but very powerful.??

Errors are the product of a chain of events, which can involve people, teams, tasks, the workplace, and other organisational factors.??

And so when we make an error, or when we discover a human error, often we blame an operator, blame a technician, blame somebody in the frontline for a mistake.?

That shouldn’t be the case.??

Discovering the error is only the beginning of a search for the cause, not the end.?

The next step would be to ask questions.??

Why did they make that mistake?? What were the causes that led them to make that mistake??

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#5: Many errors fall into recurrent patterns? ?

More than half of maintenance errors are recognised as having happened before, often many times.??

So that is something we should use to our advantage.?

Because if we can target those reoccurring errors, that must be the most effective way of addressing human errors in maintenance.?

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#6: Safety-significant errors can occur at all levels in the system.?

Alright, so this goes back to what I said earlier.??

Just because an incident happened on the plant floor and involved a frontline operator… doesn’t mean that the error that caused the incident had to happen right there on that floor.??

It may have well been caused in the office or by someone several layers higher in your organisation, someone in management. In fact, the higher in an organisation an error is made, often the more significant the consequences can be.??

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What does this mean for you??

Okay, so that was some good insight into some important aspects of managing quality and reducing human error in maintenance.??

But what does that actually mean for us?? ? How can we translate all that relatively dense academic thoughtful concepts into something simple and practical that we can actually work with? ? ? That’s something I discuss in greater detail inside our courses:?

Lesson 7.4 in our PS100: Implementing Maintenance Planning & Scheduling course directly tackles this topic.?

And in our PM100: Developing & Improving Preventive Maintenance Programs course we have a whole module dedicated to creating Maintenance Work Instructions to help reduce errors.?

If you want to learn more, feel free to reply to this email.??

P.S. Whenever you're ready, here are 3 ways we can help you on your Road to Reliability:

1. Want to train your team on how to improve your plant's maintenance reliability?

Enroll your team in one of our most popular online training courses:

Implementing Maintenance Planning and Scheduling—increase your maintenance workforce by 35% without hiring anyone. Reduce costs, improve safety and increase morale.

Developing and Improving Preventive Maintenance Programs—achieve higher reliability and availability whilst doing less maintenance. Acquire the knowledge and tools needed to create a highly effective and efficient Preventive Maintenance Program.

2. Want to know how effective your Planning & Scheduling really is?

Use our Planning & Scheduling Scorecard?to assess your performance and receive a personalised PDF report with recommendations on how to improve.

Use our Wrench Time Calculator?to easily calculate how much value your organisation is missing out when you neglect your Planning & Scheduling.

3. Want to start your journey on the road to reliability?

Download the Reliability Academy eBook?and discover a simple, proven framework that you can use to achieve a highly reliable plant for your organisation. Unlike other overly complicated models that use 10 to 20 elements, the Road to Reliability framework only uses 4 elements to achieve great results.