A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF HOW LEANING THE RISK ASSESSMENT PROCESS INDUCES BIASED JUDGEMENT

摘要

Over the years, the hydrocarbon industry has been riddled with accidents and incidences that can be partly blamed on "cost culling" driven risk assessments and operational "lean management". The epicentre of lean management is the elimination of waste for any industrial setup. However, when the processes are too lean accidents may ensue; putting the facilities, workers and the business at risk. Even though the hydrocarbon industry has reliable quantitative risk assessment techniques that may incorporate probabilistic measures to predict the likelihood of systems failure, there are times when "human call" is cardinal to decisions. Whenever human call is used in risk assessment there is a possibility of biasness in the judgement for risk partly due to the social-cultural influence on risk assessors. Therefore the aim of this research was to examine the level of social and cognitive bias in risk assessment of lean management processes at four oil and gas refinery plants in Kuwait.