Q: what's the best way to reduce human error in production? Submitted via the QP reader survey A: The old adage "to err is human; to forgive, divine" works well in social interactions, but in the industrial world, human errors can be costly and occasionally result in fatalities. The lives of a flight full of passengers may depend on an airplane pilot's alertness and attention to detail. The same attentive-ness is necessary for transactional processes in banking and finance; otherwise, organizations may go bankrupt due to human errors. Remember W. Edwards Deming's 85/15 rule that says 85% of the problems in any operation are within the system and are management's responsibility, while only 15% lie with the worker.1 The same thing holds true for human errors. Eighty-five percent of so-called human errors could be prevented by designing an effective system.
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