Role of non technical skill in human factor engineering: a crucial safety issue in Indian Railway

摘要

It is not possible to design particularly the transport system without a man. Technical skills without non technical skills are meaningless. Developing suitable non technical skills (NTS) for every category of frontline staff is considered the strongest antidote to human error. This paper is an attempt to study and identify the most prominent issues of NTS with their inter-dependencies desired to improve the safety system of Indian Railway. A descriptive analysis was performed on the responses to the questionnaires with the help of the SPSS-14 package. Seventeen factors have been selected by using brainstorming technique and finally it provides an interpretive structural model to develop a map of the complex relationships and magnitude among identified key factors of NTS for Indian Railway. The study presented in this paper will help the top management of Indian Railway in identifying the areas in which they need to focus their attention in order to provide NTS to reduce the train accidents.