The Suez Canal Incident: Learning from Failure by Using Reliability and Maintenance Techniques

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the Suez Canal incident by formulating a hybrid model, inspired by maintenance and reliability techniques, that can enable the process of learning from failures. The hybrid model uses a fault tree analysis (FTA), reliability block diagram (RBD), cut set analysis (CSA), and the bowtie method (BTM). The formulated techniques show the synergy between the techniques and how they can be incorporated in order to provide a better understanding of the incident and extract the lessons learned that can prevent a reoccurrence of such an incident. The need for a such hybrid model is essential nowadays since incidents and disasters are becoming more complex, hence a deep analytic technique is required to cover all reliability factors. It can be argued that there is no perfection in using only one technique to address all the reliability aspects, and it is vital to integrate more than one technique, with its particular advantage, in order to have a clear, focused and comprehensive understanding of the area of concern. In addition, it is essential to derive from that level of analysis lessons that can help to improve the overall system reliability and prevent future undesired events.