How to prevent "human error" on the job...?

Question

I'm interested in learning aout how to develop safeguards on the job against "human error"; can anyone recommend books and/or resources?

Details: I work at a TV station. recently, a board operator, tired after a long day on the job, loaded the wrong programming log into the computer by mistake. The next board op failed to notice the discrepancy. Result: for several hours, the station ran the wrong commercials, losing ad revenue.

Perhaps a better way of asking would be: What are some general quality-control principles I can apply in order to minimize the possibility of errors like the above?

Answer 1

Need more info:

Are you talking writing programs to stop human error?
OR perhaps to stop people from driving over each other with the forklifts?
There are many subject matter issues to consider.

Answer 2

There is no way to stop human error. If you create a safeguard against a specific error, maybe you made a mistake in its creation.

In general, to prevent human error in any job, you need to make sure employees aren't being overworked to the point of making more mistakes. Also, it helps to somehow get the employees to want to do their job well.

To try to find specific ways to solve quality problems, there are things like fishtail diagrams you can use to determine possible causes. And it always helps to have people brainstorm, including the people at fault, to come up with causes and ways to prevent them.

Based on what you have said, I can give you some potential causes and fixes. If the board operators are tired, they might need more breaks, especially if they are working long hours, or just less hours per day of work; you might also need to hire more operators to split up the workload. The programs that they load should be clearly labeled with hours, days of the week, or whatever is important to know; the easier it is to find the right program, the less likely a mistake is.

Answer 3

You can reduce (but never eliminate) human error by good interface design and ensuring that operators of critical systems get frequent breaks (and are sufficiently trained), of course routine stuff is best automated anyway precisely because people don't pay attention to something they do every day...

Something like loading the wrong Traffic Log (Ouch!) could be avoided by the simple expedient of taking the human out of the picture..... Can your automation system not chain logs (possibly by firing a macro automatically at midnight)?
Again, if you can fire macros can you write one to check the air date on a given log against the current date and throw a warning if they differ.

Can you have someone else in the station sign off on the log being correct after it is loaded?

Systems and procedures help, as does interface design and ensuring operators are not doing critical tasks in the last 1/2hr of a shift.

Sorry I don't have formal references but there should be something in the Ergonomics books (And the Military have studied this extensively, as have the Nuclear industry, so looking those papers out might be interesting).

Regards, Dan.

Answer 4

Human error is part of the job and learning process.

We as humans and workers strive to reduce it to zero, but that is not the case. Stress, pressure, inexperience and other factors will often lead to it. You can only really minimize it so it's not material and even then everyone screws up big time.

The only real way to minimize it to an acceptable level is to keep your education up, ask questions, have people review your work and go slow at first when you are learning.

I hope that helped.

Answer 5

just FOCUS. mind your work.