Inspection
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Human Factors

The discipline concerned with understanding how people interact with systems, equipment and procedures to improve safety, reliability and performance.

Definition

Human Factors is the application of human capabilities, limitations and behavior to the design of equipment, procedures, work environments and organizational systems. The objective is to reduce the likelihood of human error while improving safety, efficiency, usability and operational performance throughout the asset lifecycle.

Why It Matters

Human Factors engineering improves both personnel safety and asset reliability by designing systems that better support human decision-making and operational performance.

In Practice

Human Factors considerations include ergonomics, alarm management, interface design, workload, situational awareness, training, organizational culture and procedural design.

Common Misuse

Human Factors addresses the interaction between people and systems, whereas ergonomics focuses primarily on optimizing the physical work environment for human use.

Term Details
Synonyms:
Human Factors; Human Error; Human Reliability; Ergonomics
Classification:
Process Safety
Concept
Intermediate
Applications

Process Safety; Operations; Reliability Engineering.

Where It's Used

Process safety.; Control rooms.; Maintenance.; Operations.; Engineering design.

References

ISO 6385

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