A review of human factors and food safety in Ireland

Increased product shelf-life and globalisation have led to longer and vastly more complicated food chains; potentially presenting greater opportunity for contamination and microbial growth to occur. Modern food safety management systems risk assess hazards (based on current scientific data) and strive to control these, often extensive and convoluted, food production/supply chains through appropriate good hygiene practices (GHP) and HACCP. Contamination of food as a result of human error can undermine even the most carefully prepared and executed HACCP system – culminating in foodborne infection, outbreaks, reputable damage, and erosion of consumer trust. This paper provides a review on the effect of human factors on the food sector in Ireland. Figures on foodborne outbreaks, laboratory analysis of ready-to-eat (RTE) foods, and crude incidence rate (CIR) per 100,000 population of infection were examined; in order to gain insight into the occurrence of food safety breaches in Ireland. Food safety legislative requirements and recommendations for Irish food businesses are considered, along with rates of inspection and enforcement. An average of 86 closure orders are issued in Ireland every year as a result of breaches, which can be generally either partially/fully attributed to human factors. This paper examines the critical role of human factors in safe food production; and includes data from Irish surveys on food safety training (food handlers and trainers) and food safety violations in a selection of Irish food premises. Food business owners need to commit time and resources to identifying, risk assessing, and addressing the potential role of ‘human error’ in their facility – whether intentional, unintentional, direct, or indirect. Appropriate recognition of the importance of human factors in food safety management, coupled with a high standard of training and appropriate implementation of food safety principles is necessary to safeguard modern food businesses

Human Factors Engineering at Design Projects for Process Industry - Challenges and Lessons Learned

This paper summarises current industrial practices and standards promoting Human Factors Engineering (HFE) at design stage and revise them with an action research approached based on the concrete case studies performed during a European project called TOSCA. The paper highlights how HFE can significantly impact the costs and risk associated with a plant lifecycle and the current gaps and issues encountered. The gaps identified are used to guide industrial practices and standards towards a more valuable inclusion of Human Factors knowledge in structured system design processes to support human performance and reduce the potential for human errors in operations and maintenance

The benefits of task and cognitive workload support for operators in ground handling

The scope of the present work is to report an action research project applied to the relationship of task and cognitive workload support on one of the most important aspects of an airport: ground handling. At the beginning of the project workload management was not in the scope of work but as the project progressed and preliminary results and feedback were gained the researcher came to realize that some form of workload management support was also achieved as a by-product. The present paper is an attempt to account for what was achieved and how. Safe and efficient ground handling during departure and arrival of an aircraft requires coordinated responsibilities amongst qualified operators collaborating together simultaneously in a time constrained environment. The context is one of medium-high workload due to the number of activities covered in a short time, such as: passenger, baggage and cargo handling, aircraft loading, the provision and use of ground support equipment, etc. This paper presents the introduction of a tool aimed at performance monitoring and task support and discusses how the use of it can play a key role in the adequate management of workload by operators in Ground Handling. The core elements of the tool under analysis are electronic checklist and digitized shift handover, and it aims at highlighting how they have impacted performance, reducing operational and human related issues

Human Performance Modelling for Adaptive Automation

The relentless march of technology is increasingly opening new possibilities for the application of automation and new horizons for human machine interaction. However there is insufficient scientific evidence on human factors for modern socio-technical systems supporting the guidelines currently used to design Human Machine Interfaces (HMI) (ISA 2014). This dearth of knowledge presents a particular risk in safety critical industries. The continuing 60–90% of accidents currently that are rooted in Human Factors (HF) and the rapid developments in the Internet of Things (IoT) and its novel automation archetypes means that the requirements for new interfaces are becoming more demanding, and creating new failure modes. To address this gap it is necessary to face the issue of modelling the human factor element and be ready to incorporate that knowledge into the design of adaptive automation

Comparing Passenger Satisfaction, Employees’ Perspective and Performance on Quality and Safety Indicators: A field study

This paper aims to analyze the impact that different attributes related to a Regional Airport service and the socio-economic factors of the passengers have on the passenger’s overall satisfaction. The study also compared passenger and employee satisfaction in relation to the service offered by the airport, to identify possible critical areas of improvement. An Ordinal Logistic Regression (OLR) approach was used to model how the attributes considered for qualifying airport services and the socio-economic variables impact the predicted variable (i.e., passenger satisfaction). Furthermore, the results were triangulated to include quality and safety performance indicators as an objective anchor point for the performance of the company. The findings indicate interesting areas of difference between the perceptions of the passengers and airport employees regarding a company’s services and its performance. The company managers in the key areas of operation were then asked to select the main areas of improvement among the ones highlighted by the survey’s results. Quality and safety indicators were also helpful in enriching the analysis and indicating good synergy with the suggestions collected from the passengers’ and the employees’ surveys, offering yet another complementary perspective

A multi-discipline method to assess the human performance in manufacturing industry for safety and quality optimization

Nowadays the majority of organizations operating in manufacturing field recognize the importance of including the Human Factor contribution in the industrial process optimization (Hong et al. 2007). Technical measures and work organization procedures have been optimized in order to reduce the defects and waste generation but the Human Performance prediction still represents for Managers a difficult task to deal with. The prediction of the human performances of all workers involved in a production system would help Managers in better allocating the human resources. In order to reach this objective, a model to quantify the human capability of managing a complex task in a working context characterized by a set of physical, organizational and cognitive factors was designed. This paper presents the preliminary results of a three years industry/academia partnership project to assess the human performance in manufacturing plant. A multi-discipline approach involving both technical and individual factors was adopted

Hazard Perception and Reporting

Reporting of hazards is a key aspect of safety management in industry, but relatively little empirical investigation of reporting has been undertaken. This research reports on an investigation that was carried out in the Science gallery at Trinity College Dublin to explore the detection and reporting of hazards by members of the public. Three simulated hazards were developed and placed around the risk lab. The experiment was designed to assess the capacity to recall recognise and report hazards of the participants by means of an exit survey. Participants performed better at recognition than recollection with no actual reporting of hazards recorded. The results validated some of the findings suggested by the literature and can assist in the development of a new experimental methodology as training within organizations to improve awareness of hazards and reporting practices