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IMPROVING BUSINESS PERFORMANCE THROUGH THE INTEGRATION OF HUMAN FACTORS ENGINEERING INTO ORGANIZATIONS USING A SYSTEMS ENGINEERING APPROACH.
Title
IMPROVING BUSINESS PERFORMANCE THROUGH THE INTEGRATION OF HUMAN FACTORS ENGINEERING INTO ORGANIZATIONS USING A SYSTEMS ENGINEERING APPROACH.
Creator
Philippart, Monica, Karwowski, Waldemar, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
Most organizations today understand the valuable contribution employees as people (rather than simply bodies) provide to their overall performance. Although efforts are made to make the most of the human in organizations, there is still much room for improvement. Focus in the reduction of employee injuries such as cumulative trauma disorders rose in the 80's. Attempts at increasing performance by addressing employee satisfaction through various methods have also been ongoing for several...
Show moreMost organizations today understand the valuable contribution employees as people (rather than simply bodies) provide to their overall performance. Although efforts are made to make the most of the human in organizations, there is still much room for improvement. Focus in the reduction of employee injuries such as cumulative trauma disorders rose in the 80's. Attempts at increasing performance by addressing employee satisfaction through various methods have also been ongoing for several years now. Knowledge Management is one of the most recent attempts at controlling and making the best use of employees' knowledge. All of these efforts and more towards that same goal of making the most of people's performance at work are encompassed within the domain of the Human Factors Engineering/Ergonomics field. HFE/E provides still untapped potential for organizational performance as the human and its optimal performance are the reason for this discipline's being. Although Human Factors programs have been generated and implemented, there is still the need for a method to help organizations fully integrate this discipline into the enterprise as a whole. The purpose of this research is to develop a method to help organizations integrate HFE/E into it business processes. This research begun with a review of the ways in which the HFE/E discipline is currently used by organizations. The need and desire to integrate HFE/E into organizations was identified, and a method to accomplish this integration was conceptualized. This method consisted on the generation of two domain-specific ontologies (a Human Factors Engineering/Ergonomics ontology, and a Business ontology), and mapping the two creating a concept map that can be used to integrate HFE/E into businesses. The HFE/E ontology was built by generating two concept maps that were merged and then joined with a HFE/E discipline taxonomy. A total of four concept maps, two ontologies and a taxonomy were created, all of which are contributions to the HFE/E, and the business- and management-related fields.
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Date Issued
2008
Identifier
CFE0002445, ucf:47716
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0002445
INFLUENCE MAP METHODOLOGY FOR EVALUATING SYSTEMIC SAFETY ISSUES
Title
INFLUENCE MAP METHODOLOGY FOR EVALUATING SYSTEMIC SAFETY ISSUES.
Creator
Barth, Timothy, Pet-Armacost, Julia, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
"Raising the bar" in safety performance is a critical challenge for many organizations. Contributing factor taxonomies organize information on why accidents occur. Therefore, they are essential elements of accident investigations and safety reporting systems. Organizations must balance efforts to identify causes of specific accidents with efforts to evaluate systemic safety issues in order to become more proactive about improving safety. This research successfully addressed two problems: (1)...
Show more"Raising the bar" in safety performance is a critical challenge for many organizations. Contributing factor taxonomies organize information on why accidents occur. Therefore, they are essential elements of accident investigations and safety reporting systems. Organizations must balance efforts to identify causes of specific accidents with efforts to evaluate systemic safety issues in order to become more proactive about improving safety. This research successfully addressed two problems: (1) limited methods and metrics exist to support the design of effective taxonomies, and (2) influence relationships between contributing factors are not explicitly modeled within a taxonomy. The primary result of the taxonomic relationship modeling efforts was an innovative "dual role" contributing factor taxonomy with significant improvements in comprehensiveness and diagnosticity over existing taxonomies. The influence map methodology was the result of a unique graphical and analytical combination of the dual role taxonomy and influence relationship models. Influence maps were developed for several safety incidents at Kennedy Space Center. An independent assessment was conducted by a team of experts using the new dual role taxonomy and influence chain methodology to evaluate the accuracy and completeness of contributing factors identified during the formal incident investigations. One hundred and sixteen contributing factors were identified using the influence map methodology. Only 16% of these contributing factors were accurately identified with traditional tools, and over half of the 116 contributing factors were completely unaddressed by the findings and recommendations of the formal incident reports. The new methodology is being applied to improve spaceport operations and enhance designs of future NASA launch systems.
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Date Issued
2006
Identifier
CFE0001274, ucf:46928
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0001274