Incorporating Human Reliability Analysis to enhance Maintenance Audits: The Case of Rail Bogie Maintenance

• Main Authors: Majumdar, A, Singh, S, Kyriakidis, M
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: The Prognostics and Health Management Society 2018
• Subjects: Luleå
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/56155; http://www.phmsociety.org/node/2259

Human error occurring during maintenance activities can reduce the safety and availability of equipments significantly. Identification of potential human errors, the cause of such errors and prediction the associate probability are important stages in order to manage the human errors. This paper investigates the probability of human error during maintenance of railway bogie. The case study examines technicians performing maintenance on the disc brake assembly unit, wheel set and bogie frame under various error producing conditions in a railway maintenance workshop in Luleå, Sweden. It implements Human Error Assessment and Reduction Technique (HEART) to determine the probability of human error occurring during each maintenance task, and applies fault tree analysis. The probability of the technician committing an error during maintenance of the disc brake assembly, wheel set and bogie frame is found to be 0.20, 0.039 and 0.021 respectively, with the human error probability for the entire bogie 0.24. Time pressures, ability to detect and perceive problems, over-riding information, the need to make decisions and mismatch between the operator and designer’s model turn out to be major contributors to human error. These findings can help maintenance management understand conditions and serve as an input to modify policies and guidelines for railway maintenance tasks.