Human Error Essays -- Miscommunication, Shift Work

To err is human. Throughout everyday life, human error is around every corner. Human error is defined as, â€Å"a mistake made by a person rather than being caused by a poorly designed process or the malfunctioning of a machine such as a computer.† (Encarta, 2009) To simplify this definition, people make mistakes. Human error may become apparent in the form of human behavior or conduct that can be categorized as undesirable, unacceptable, careless, inattentive, forgetful, reckless, harmful, a miscommunication, human performance that is extreme in variability or beyond the limits of that expected, or an inappropriate form of risk taking behavior. An error may be harmless, it may be detectable and correctable, or it may serve to predict future problems (Peters, 2006). Many references to human error are associated with high-profile catastrophes. The publics concern over these high-profile catastrophes puts human error in the spotlight. Some examples of human error catastrophes include: the Tenerife runway collision in 1977, Three Mile Island in 1979, the Bhopal methyl isocyanate tragedy in 1984, the Challenger and Chernobyl disasters of 1986, and the Piper Alpha oil platform explosion in 1988. While these catastrophes put human error concerns in the spotlight, the human error impact on manufacturing operations can be just as detrimental. All of the catastrophes that were described above happened on a night shift period of shift work. Shift work involves the alternation of teams of worker each working a certain â€Å"shift†, and who usually perform the same work duties so that operations can be continued for longer than allowed by any single worker. Shift work schedules necessarily require some workers to work for periods of ti... ...ng questionnaires to the convenience sample was the basis of the study. This data was collected for a three-week period. The questionnaires were evaluated and descriptive statistics via means and standard deviations were used to describe the effect on work performance. This study shows that all age groups are subject to exposure to physiological and psychological hazards brought about by night shift as indicated in their subjective response. It also shows that shift work is related to workplace fatigue and accident injury rates (Hayajneh, 2008). Throughout literature review it seems that most research and studies support the fact that accident rates and shift work are related. The studies that were examined as part of this literature review compare and contrast various sides of business functions with similar results in accident rates and shift work data.