Industrial safety human factors

Training program for safety officers and safety delegates in industrial settings human factors and safety principles... 

The book begins with a discussion of the theories of error causation and then goes on to describe the various ways in which data can be collected, analyzed, and used to reduce the potential for error. Case studies are used to teach the methodology of error reduction in specific industry operations. Finally, the book concludes with a plan for a plant error reduction program and a discussion of how human factors principles impact on the process safety management system. 

Despite the lack of interest in human factors issues in the CPI in the past, the situation is now changing. In 1985, Trevor Kletz published his landmark book on human error in the CPI An Engineer s View of Human Error (revised in 1991). Several other books by the same author e.g., Kletz (1994b) have also addressed the issue of human factors in case studies. Two other publications have also been concerned specifically with human factors in the process industry Lorenzo (1990) was commissioned by the Chemical Manufacturers Association in the USA, and Mill (1992), published by the U.K. Institution of Chemical Engineers. In 1992, CCPS and other organizations sponsored a conference on Human Factors and Human Reliability in Process Safety (CCPS, 1992c). This was further evidence of the growing interest in the topic within the CPI. 

Health and Safety Executive (HSE), Booklet HS1G148. Human Factors in Industrial Safety, HMSO. London. U.K,... 

Where loss of control could lead to severe consequences, the integrity of the basic process control system and the protective safeguards must be designed, operated and maintained to a high standard. Industry standards such as ANSI/ISA-S84.01 (1996) and IEC 61508 (2000) address the issues of how to design, operate and maintain safety instrumented systems such as high temperature interlocks to achieve the necessary level of functional safety. The scope of these standards includes hardware, software, human factors and management (HSE 2000). 

There are a number of well-described, formal analytical techniques which can be adopted from other safety-critical industries. However some can be challenging to apply in HIT due to the extent to which human factors influence the risk. 

Alhemood, A. (2004). Development of safety engineering eurricula in the gulf eooperative countries to meet local manufacturing needs. Human Factors and Ergonomics in Manufacturing Service Industries, 14(3), 321-326. 

Kathryn Mearns spent twenty years working in academia, before taking up a new role as a Human Faetors Speeialist Inspector with the Offshore Division of the UK Health and Safety Exeeutive in 2012. She has published extensively in the area of human faetors in health and safety in a range of industries including offshore oil and gas, air traffic management, and health eare. She continues to be involved in human factors research through a part-time professorship at the University of Bergen. 

Heinrich s studies, from which his accident prevention philosophy originated, were done in the 1920s. And the workplace has been impacted since then by mechanization, automation, more stringent safety standards, human factors engineering, improved knowledge of and more effective control of occupational diseases, the electronic age, the communication age, the transition in the United States from a manufacturing-based to a service-based industry, et cetera. 

The practice of safety can be moved forward if safety practitioners discard the terms unsafe acts and unsafe conditions and replace them with terms such as causal factors or risk factors (terms commonly used by ergonomists, human factors engineers, and industrial hygienists) and concentrate on the sources of the causal factors, most of which are systemic. 

Cooper and Leape are not the only authors to understand the importance of human factors and psychology to medical harm and medical error at an early stage. For instance, Marilyn Bogner s 1994 book Human error in medicine contained many insightful and important chapters by David Woods, Richard Cook, NevUle Moray and others James Reason articulated his theory of accidents and discussed its apphcation in medicine in Medical Accidents (Vincent, Ennis and Audley, 1993). Cooper and Leape were, however, particularly important influences and they Ulustrate the more general point that some of the defining characteristics of patient safety are its acceptance of the importance of psychology and the lessons to be learnt from other safety critical industries. 

Human factors experts working in high-risk industries often have to estimate the likelihood of accidents occurring when preparing a safety case ... 

Their systems engineering approach to patient safety is anchored within the industrial engineering subspecialty of human factors. The discipline of human factors emphasizes interactions between people and their environment that contribute to performance, safety and health, and quabty of working life, and the goods or services produced (Carayon et al 2006). The model builds on Donabedian s structure-process-outcome model and incorporates the main themes discussed in the frameworks earlier in the chapter. There are some differences of perspective task and technologies are separated, patient and staff... 

VIRTHUALIS is a European Research Project on Industrial Safety, which aims at producing an innovative technology that integrates Virtual Reality and Human Factors methods, to improve safety in production plants and storage sites. 

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