Hi,
The only reason that i think can be the cause of it is the user load and the value of the below parameters that sap talks about in the note .
There has been an overflow of SQL Server variables @@CPU_BUSY, @@IO_BUSY or @@IDLE.
Selecting the value of one of these variables results in an arithmetic overflow message, but the processing continues.
It might be that these parameters might have not overflow in Dev and Qua and that is the reason you would have not seen this error.
In the note it also says that the restart can also fix the issue. And usually dev and Qua go down more offen than production. 
That i can think off if you say all things are same and no patch difference.
Thanks
Rishi abrol