HUMAN OPERATOR ASSESSMENT-BASIS FOR A SAFE WORKPLACE IN THE PROCESS INDUSTRY

摘要

The human operator is the core of good functioning for almost every technical installation, in the civil or military field. About 75% of the occupational accidents are provoked by the human operator. Assessment of the human operator from the safety point of view will be the first step toward a safer workplace. Unfortunately, the assessment process of the human operator is a very subjective job, considering the mostly subjective parameters that are defining him. This paper shows aspects of the design and application of a better and objective safety assessment system for the human operator, considering all the definitory categories for his/hers safety, like training, physical state, psychical state, stress, attitudes and so on. The system was built on the basis of operational analysis, robotics theory and also the most advanced information instruments available. Searching the space state of the man-machine system in its workplace instance, there could be defined optimum state functions that are balancing the need for efficiency with the safety requirements. The assessment system is using checklists to compute these functions and then is cross-checking these functions against reference values. On the basis of the calculated optimum values, a general score for the human operator is calculated, being compared then with reference scores for various activities inside the process industry. The general score and optimum state functions offer indications about actions that must be taken to improve the safety of the human operator, and actions like a better training, moving to another workplace and so on. The system has a multilevel architecture, starting with base level-basic assessment, done by complex checklists, a middle level for assessing the safety of process specific activities and a final level for assessing the operator's safety at his workplace. The implementation of this system has started in pilot centers from Romania's process industry, till now being obtained very promising results. Some of these results are also presented in this paper.