Organizational and Human Factors

Fortunately, this remoteness is disappearing, but it still needs a friendly push. Measures that should be taken to reinforce the understanding that the IT Department is part of the GxP environment include the following  

In most large organizations, these measures are already in place, but organizations are not yet comfortable with them. They will take time to mature, but the future is pushing these two strange bedfellows closer together, so mature they must. 

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Secondly, Platypus provides insight into the factors that influence the frequency of LoC events before accidents have taken place, whereas traditionally that information could only be derived from historical data. In Platypus, technical, organizational and human factors elements are integrated which enables an in-depth analysis of causes of LoC and the effectiveness of measures. This paper demonstrates how easy it would be to perform such an analysis. 

Over 80% of marine accidents are the result of or influenced by organizational and human factors [19, 24]. 

Procedures of direct hazard and safety analysis attempt to circumvent these drawbacks and identify accident conditions before an accident occurs. However, the problem about these procedures is to identify technical, organizational, and human factors that can lead to an accident or disturbance. Many factors seemingly dangerous do not necessarily lead to an accident, though. As a consequence, conditions to make safe behavior more likely have to be established. 

Accident cause analysis Technical, organizational and human factors... 

Meshkati, N. (1996), Organizational and Safety Factors in Automated Oil and Gas Pipeline Systems, in Automation and Human Performance Theory and Applications, R. Parasuraman and M. Mouloua, Eds., Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ, pp. 427-446. 

Wiener, E. (1994), Integrating Practices and Procedures into Organizational Policies and Philosophies, Invited presentation at the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Flight Stifety and Human Factors Seminar (Amsterdam, May 18). 

Reliability and Safety Data Collection and Analysis Fault Identification and Diagnostics Maintenance Modelling and Optimisation Structural Reliability and Design Codes Software Reliability Consequence Modelling Uncertainty and Sensitivity Analysis Safety Culture Organizational Learning Human Factors... 

Environmental and organizational and job factors, system design, task attributes and human characteristics that influence behaviour and affect health and safety. ... 

Major organizational accidents such as the destruction of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986, the explosion of the Chemobyl s nuclear power plant in 1987, the accident with off-shore platform Piper Alpha in 1988 or the destmction of the space shuttle Columbia in 2003, highlighted the relevance of hmnan contributions to organizational safety. Investigations traditionally considered technical and human factors in the development and prevention of these negative events but, in spite of such operational perspective, statistics have revealed the preponderance of human factors in up to 60-70 percent of the situations (e.g., Deldcer, 2002). 

These are the conditions in existence immediately prior or at the time of the incident that directly influences human and equipment performance in the workplace. These are the circumstances under which the errors and violations took place and can be embedded in task demands, the work environment, individual capabilities and human factors. Deficiencies in these conditions can promote the occurrence of errors and violations. They may also stem from an organizational factor type such as risk management, training, incompatible goals, or organization, when the system tolerates their long term existence. 

The UK Health and Safety Executive defines human factors as environmental, organizational and job factors, and human and individual... 

Both the integrative model by Smillie Ayoub (1975) and the deviation concept by Kjellen (1984a) connect the general systems theory to the sequencing and energy models of accident causation. They encompass technical, organizational and human components of the system. Various methods of system safety analysis (e.g. fault tree analysis, incidental factor analysis) support the identification of technical and human deviations as well as the analysis of the conditions and consequences of these deviations. From the discussion of near misses and conflicts it became clear that frameworks of accident causation should cover all kinds of incidents, thus becoming frameworks of incidents. 

Discussion of and research into human error focusses on slips, mistakes, incidents and accidents and their internal and external mechanisms. Research on accident liability centers on work- or traffic-related accidents emphasizing personal variables as an explanation of the occurrence of accidents. Systems variables such as workplace design or work environment are not considered systematically. Modern human factors approaches examine the joint effects of personal, organizational and technical factors on human reliability, employing accident-independent as well as accident-centered safety analysis methods. 

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