If an employee is functioning at a ninety-nine percent reliability rate, what are the chances of them getting any one of a hundred steps in a procedure correct? In other words, how well will they function without error? If we are only looking at one step, the simple answer is 99% of the time for that one step or any other single step.
What are the chances of getting all 100 steps correct? Now we are considering probability and the probability of chance, which we would consider to be about 37 percent chance of getting all one hundred correct. That is essentially a one in three chance of getting all 100 steps correct.
So what percentage is acceptable for a critical step? The most obvious response is 100%, but more importantly, why is that? There are really two big reasons, Critical Steps are irreversible and irrecoverable. Failure of a Critical Step will result in harm to the environment and or your assets, people, equipment, facilities, products, and or reputation. The result of not having a 100% acceptance rate, is a loss of control and an event occurring.