TRAINING & RECRUITMENT
SYSTEMIC APPROACH
TEC TRANSNATIONAL
COMBATTING HUMAN ERRORS IN MANUFACTURING
By Dr David Scrimshire
– MD of TEC Transnational
TEC Transnational’s 2-day course is
unique and covers in detail everything
that is needed to develop, document
and implement the management
processes to address human factors in the
manufacturing environment.
We’ve all heard the excuse: “it’s down to
human error” with the assumption that
there’s nothing we can do about it. However,
when any type of quality issue is caused by
a person doing something incorrectly there
will be a deeper root cause of the incident.
In any situation there are likely to be many
factors that can lead to a human error,
and these precursors or preconditions are
referred to as human factors.
The study of human factors is about people
in their working environments, and it is also
about their relationship with equipment and
procedures. Just as importantly, it is about
their relationships with other people – their
co-workers and managers. Its objectives
can be seen as: safety, efficiency and
effectiveness.
Human factors answer the question: “Why
do smart people sometimes do stupid and/
or dangerous things?
HUMAN ERRORS ARE CAUSED
BY HUMAN FACTORS
Combatting human errors requires a
systemic approach that ideally prevents
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their occurrence in the first place or
mitigates the severity of their consequences
if they happen, and then puts in place a
countermeasure to ensure they never re-
occur.
There are many factors that can cause a
situation where a human error can occur,
and these precursors or preconditions are
referred to as ‘human factors’. Information
relating to human factors in aircraft
maintenance is widely available, but little
exists for the manufacturing sector. Dr
David Scrimshire (MD of TEC) stated: “this
prompted me to design a short course
specifically for manufacturing organizations,
that design-and-manufacture or just make-
to-print”.
The course commences with an
explanation and examples of why human
errors occur in manufacturing operations
and their consequences. Guidance is
provided on selecting the appropriate
‘models’ to search for, and prove, the root
causes. The models are augmented with
Why Trees and Boolean logic to enhance
the search. Attention then switched
to devising and implement effective
controls (barriers) to prevent or mitigate
the consequences of human errors to
downstream operations or the customer.
I’ve also added a session to show how to
use practical psychology to help motivate
staff.
The course is highly interactive and
includes many individual and team
exercises, Case Studies and quizzes.
The full course syllabus is available at
our web page:
(tectransnational.com).