THIS IS NOT A COMPUTERGAME! - PROCESS PLANT WORKERS' KNOWLEDGE TO AVOID UNFORESEEN INCIDENTS

摘要

In the Norwegian oil company "NORWESTOIL" increased efficiency and reduced costs are tried to be achieved by changing the organization by the ideas and principles of the management concept of BPR (Business Process Reengineering) also called reengineering or only process organizing. This should lead to new ways of working in multidisciplinary teams, organized by area location, an integration of maintenance workers and shift workers simultaneously by the outsourcing of maintenance work. This concept is also closely connected to the use of new ICT. These changes of organization by BPR address the question of shift workers' knowledge and skills. What do they do and how is experience and practice important? How important is outdoor working in relation to control panel work? What does the change in formal education between the old and the young shift workers mean in the future? How is unforeseen incidents influenced by these changes? Another important argument has been that experience and material work is important to handle unforeseen incidents. This paper questions the argumentation of a shift in maintenance workers' knowledge, focusing on the lack of tacit knowledge by less outdoor, process plant work as addressed by Zuboff (1989). In contrary this paper argues for continuity not fragmentation and loss in the knowledge and skill of shift workers. This study is based on participative observations and in depth interviews made during a fieldwork of one and a half year in the process plant.