Equipment design, performance-influencing factors

MaintainabiUty is a characteristic of design, installation, and operation, usually expressed as the probabiUty that a system can be restored to specified operable conditions within a specified interval of time when maintenance is performed in accordance with prescribed procedures. The ease of fault detection, isolation, and repair are all influenced by system design and are principal factors contributing to maintainabiUty. Also contributing is the supply of spare parts, the supporting repair organization, and preventative maintenance practices. MaintainabiUty must be designed into the equipment. Some factors to consider foUow. 

The HCF is an existing facility that has undergone numerous modifications. Because of this, the facility and many of its operating systems were not designed to meet current human-factors standards. However, human-factors considerations influence the design and operation of new HCF equipment such as control panels, manipulators, and performance monitoring instrumentation. 

The engineering properties of soils used for embankments, such as their shear strength and compressibility, are influenced by the amount of compaction they have undergone. Accordingly, the desired amount of compaction is established in relation to the engineering properties required for the embankment to perform its design function. A specification for compaction needs to indicate the type of compaction equipment to be used, its mass, speed and travel, and any other factors influencing performance such as frequency of vibration, thickness of layers to be compacted and number of passes of the compactor (Table 9.8). 

Before starting to design a time-resolved experiment one has to check if it is possible to obtain the information that one needs with the available experimental equipment. Ultimately, this can only be determined empirically, but by carefully assessing the factors that influence the time resolution, it might be possible to see beforehand if there is not a parameter that inhibits the experimenter to perform the experiment at the time resolution needed in order to render relevant results, and thus avoid wasting the scarce time generally allocated to central SR facility users. The important parameters are... 

The HSE s publication Human factors in industrial safety (HS(G)48) defines human factors as a range of issues including the perceptual, physical and mental capabilities of people and the interactions of individuals with their jobs and working environments, the influence of equipment and system design on human performance and, above all, the organisational charcteristics which influence safety-related behaviour at work. ... 

A full discussion of the interactions between people and their organisation, jobs and working environment, and the influence of equipment and systems design on human performance, is beyond the scope of this book. The aim of this chapter is to provide an insight into some of the basic concepts involved, and to discuss some of the solutions currently used to tackle them. A concise and readable summary of human factors in safety can be found in the excellent HSE publication Reducing error and influencing behaviour . 

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