According to statistics, majority of chemical accidents were caused by human factors during the production and storage of chemicals. From the perspective of human factors, a safety assessment method for chemical plant production process based on cloud model combined with nonlinear fuzzy analytic hierarchy process is proposed in this paper. The method comprehensively considers the safety influencing elements of human factors in seven aspects: organization, information, job design, human system interface, task environment, workplace design, and operator characteristics. We use the analytic hierarchy process to establish a hierarchical structure system. Then use the triangular fuzzy numbers to quantify the indicators and the logarithmic fuzzy preference programming method to calculate the index weights. Finally, the cloud model is applied to determine the safety level of the chemical plant production process. The method is simulated and verified simultaneously. The simulation results showed that the method is reliable, practical and scientific as a safety assessment method for chemical production. (C) 2020 Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.