The Occurrence of Human Error - Essay Example

? Human Error Human Error Human error simply refers to an error that is made by human beings. However, we find that it gets somehow complicated than just that. It is true that mistakes are made by people; but the most important thing is why they make the mistakes. With that taken into consideration, human error is when an individual makes a mistake because that particular individual made a mistake, contrary to being influenced or even confused by some other design factors. It is also referred to as Operator Error. Nevertheless, human error is a critical ergonomics concept but it primarily referred to in context; that is it is a probable answer to the questions of: “How did it break?” or “What caused the accident?” That does not imply that the bud vase broke due to human error. But when one is evaluating an accident from a piece of system of equipment, then it might have happened as a result of human error. It might also be inappropriate manufacturing or installation fault or even a slew of some other possibilities (Feynman, 1988). There is an old incident of I Love Lucy whereby Lucy lands a job at an assembly line boxing candies. However, the live is moving in a very fast manner that she is not able to keep up and wacky comic romps ensue (Sage, 1992). The system’s breakdown was not a mechanical problem but human error. Therefore, human error is normally occurs during a mishap or accident investigation like a house fire, car crash or even a problem with any consumer product that leads to a recall. It is always associated with an unconstructive or negative occurrence. In the case of industrial operations, something known as unintentional consequence might occur (Gertman, & Blackman, 2001). This might not essentially be a bad one, but just inexplicable. And investigation might come to a conclusion that the design of system or equipment is well but was messed up by the human component. From the viewpoint of design, the designer or engineer produces a piece of system or equipment with intentions of operation in a particular manner. When it appears not to operate in that manner; that is it catches on fire, it breaks, is befallen of some other accident or messes up the output, they attempt to establish the major cause (Weick, 1998). Nonetheless, human error might be recognized as the cause when the major cause is some other thing on the list. For instance, if a switch fails to function when it is being used by the operator, it is not human error but a malfunction (McCauley & Berkowitz, 1999). Whereas there are some other things that greatly contribute to the occurrence of human error, faults in design are normally also regarded as human errors (Feynman, 2006). However, there is a continuing debate between the designers who are ergonomic centered and those who are engineering centered regarding design deficiency and human error. On one hand is the assumption that nearly all human error is linked to deficiency in design since a good design is supposed to consider the behavior of humans and plan those probabilities, whereas on the other hand they assume that individuals make mistakes and despite what they are given they will always find a way of breaking them (Marx, 1997). Preventing ‘error’ in safety critical systems For most safety-critical systems, like the systems of cancer irradiation and medical infusion pumps, the “Safe State” means immediately stopping and turning off the system. For some other safety critical systems, there is nothing in existence like safe state. Simply stopping is never an option for these systems (Marx, 1999). Examples include the medical respiratory ventilators and airplane jet engine controllers. However, for some other critical systems, we find that there are safe states, even though they require a very lengthy and complex series of activities so as to bring system to a safe state. As for all the systems that are embedded, design comes after the definition of system requirements, which covers functional and physical specification. For the safety critical systems, a meticulous risk analysis and hazard analysis should be carried out. It is only then that architectural design can be commenced (Reason, 2000). The aim of hazard analysis is to methodically identify the risks that are posed to human safety by a system, which include an examination of the probability of an accident occurring as a result of each hazard. A common method that can be used in performing the analysis of hazard is the “Fault Tree Analysis.” This technique takes an approach of top-down hierarchical decomposition. However, it does not crumble or decompose functions, but involves the decomposition of unnecessary system events so as to determine the combinations of software, hardware, human or even other errors could bring about hazards that are safety-threatening (Reason, 1997). Possibility of having a generic theory of error It is true that it is very possible to have a generic theory of error. It has long been accepted that the performance of human beings is not perfect at times. About two thousand years ago, Cicero, the Roman philosopher that it is the nature of human error, and it is a clear fact that whenever women and men are engaged in any activity, then it goes without saying that there will be occurrence of human error at some point. Researchers now concur that both errors and correct performance follow from the same fundamental cognitive process (Medvedev, 1991). Nevertheless, human cognition uses the process that enable human beings to be surprisingly fast, to be in a position of responding flexibly to the new situations, as well as to juggle a number of tasks at once. It is unfortunate that these processes inexorably produce infrequent or intermittent errors. An adequate or sufficient human action theory should not only account for the correct performance, but also for the varieties of errors of human that are predictable. Correct performance and forms of systematic error are regarded as the two sides of just the same theoretical coin. For instance, in most cases, we find that the occasional errors that are brought about by the human cognitive processes infrequently lead to severe problems. In the models of large spreadsheets with numerous cells, even just a minuscule rate of error can result to a disaster. References Feynman, R. (1988). What do you care what other people think. Unwin. Feynman, R. (2006). Challenger Shuttle explosion. CRC Press. Gertman, D. L. and Blackman, H. S. (2001). Human reliability and safety analysis data handbook. Wiley. Marx D. (1997). “Discipline: the role of rule violations.” Ground Effects, 1997;2: 1-4. Marx D. (1999). Maintenance Error Causation. Washington, DC: Federal Aviation Authority Office of Aviation Medicine. McCauley J, and Berkowitz L, (1999). Altruism and Helping Behavior. New York: Academic Press. Medvedev G. (1991). The Truth About Chernobyl. New York: Basic Books. Reason J. (1997). Managing the Risks of Organizational Accidents. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. Reason J. (2000). Human Error. New York: Cambridge University Press. Sage, A. P. (1992). Systems engineering. Wiley. Weick KE, and Sutcliffe KM, (1999). “Organizing for high reliability: processes of collective mindfulness.” Res Organizational Behav, 21: 23-81. Weick KE. (1998). “Organizational culture as a source of high reliability.” Calif Management Rev, 29: 112-127. Read More