Human Errors in a Syringe Factory in Urmia Using PHEA

Background/Objectives: Studies show that 60-90% of incidents are directly caused by human errors. The objectives of this study is to determine human errors among manufacturing operators of a syringe factory. Methodology: by identifying the tasks of operators, the tasks of injection, print, assembly and packing operators were determined as important and sensitive tasks. HTA was used to analyze the tasks. Then, PHEA was used to identify the errors related to the tasks. Finally, frequency and types of tasks were determined by the software SPSS-16. Findings: in this study, 175 errors were identified in 8 major and 18 minor tasks of technical engineering, 3 major and 16 minor tasks of injection, 6 major and 7 minor tasks of printing, 4 major and 8 minor tasks of assembly, 1 major and 1 minor tasks of primary packing, 1 major and 2 minor tasks of secondary packing, 2 major and 4 minor tasks of final packing and 5 major and 31 minor tasks of operation. According to results, 103 action errors, 25 checking errors, 10 retrieval errors, 4 information errors, 15 selection errors and 18 sequence errors were identified. Applications/Improvements: PHEA can be used to analyze human errors of tasks and provide solutions to reduce those errors.