Title: Quantitative analysis and assessment of intrinsic and extrinsic factors in human-in-the-loop incidents and prevalent early failures

Authors: David E. Verbitsky

Addresses: Alefa, 6Cactus Ct., Edison, NJ 08820, USA

Abstract: Comprehensive analyses of complex human-in-the-loop (HITL)-equipment incidents and early failures (EF) are critical for prevention of safety problems. Traditional methods often overestimate extrinsic late-life causes, overlook and/or misattribute prevalent EF causing high losses and missing vital opportunities. Instrumentation-based systemic early failure analysis (SEFA) methodology provides comprehensive assessments of human-technical-mixed root causes and interactions. It also sorts few fundamental intrinsic causes and numerous trivial extrinsic ones using physics and subject-matter specifics (Juran-F10 principle). A typical industry-new EF of micro-wire-wound resistors supported by similar cross-industry errors illustrate the issues proving inherent deficiency of conventional approaches. These urge to restore enhanced modernised SEFA-centred closed feedback loop. The proposed SEFA-based semi-quantitative expert weight assessment better characterises multifaceted HITL incidents-EF vs. the conventional qualitative common-special causes. SEFA has demonstrated concurrent multifaceted improvements and high customer satisfaction for all tiers of modern HITL electronics.

Keywords: human-in-the-loop; HITL; quantitative assessment; early failure; EF; root cause analysis; closed feedback loop; extrinsic-intrinsic; common-special; systemic early failure analysis; SEFA; FRACAS-EM.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHFMS.2018.093208

International Journal of Human Factors Modelling and Simulation, 2018 Vol.6 No.2/3, pp.228 - 248

Received: 18 Sep 2017
Accepted: 26 Apr 2018

Published online: 13 Jul 2018 *

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