This study aims to propose a conceptual design of information displays for supporting responsive actions under severe accidents in Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs). Severe accidents in NPPs can be defined as accident conditions that are more severe than a design basis accident and involving significant core degradation. Since the Fukushima accident in 2011, the management of severe accidents is increasing important in nuclear industry. Dealing with severe accidents involves several cognitively complex activities, such as situation assessment; accordingly, it is significant to provide human operators with appropriate knowledge support in their cognitive activities. Currently, severe accident management guidelines (SAMG) have been developed for this purpose. However, it is also inevitable to develop information displays for supporting the management of severe accidents, with which human operators can monitor, control, and diagnose the states of NPPs under severe accident situations. It has been reported that Ecological Interface Design (EID) framework can be a viable approach for developing information displays used in complex socio-technical systems such as NPPs. Considering the design principles underlying the EID, we can say that EID-based information displays can be useful for dealing with severe accidents effectively. This study developed a conceptual design of information displays to be used in severe accidents, following the stipulated design process and principles of the EID framework. We particularly attempted to develop a conceptual design to make visible the principle knowledge to be used for coping with dynamically changing situations of NPPs under severe accidents.

There has been a significant decline in the number of rail accidents in Korea since system safety management activities were introduced. Nonetheless, analyzing and preventing human error-related accidents is still an important issue in railway industry. As a railway system is increasingly automated and intelligent, the mechanism and process of an accident occurrence are more and more complicated. It is now essential to consider a variety of factors and their intricate interactions in the analysis of rail accidents. However, it has proved that traditional accident models and methods based on a linear cause-effect relationship are inadequate to analyze and to assess accidents in complex systems such as railway systems. In order to supplement the limitations of traditional safety methods, recently some systemic safety models and methods have been developed. Of those, FRAM(Functional Resonance Analysis Method) has been recognized as one of the most useful methods for analyzing accidents in complex systems. It reflects the concepts of performance adjustment and performance variability in a system, which are fundamental to understanding the processes of an accident in complex systems. This study aims to apply FRAM to the analysis of a rail accident involving human errors, which occurred recently in South Korea. Through the application of FRAM, we found that it can be a useful alternative to traditional methods in the analysis and assessment of accidents in complex systems. In addition, it was also found that FRAM can help analysts understand the interactions between functional elements of a system in a systematic manner.

Visual inspection is regarded as one of the critical activities for quality control in a manufacturing company. it is thus important to improve the performance of detecting a defective part or product. There are three probable working modes for visual inspection: fully automatic (by automatic machines), fully manual (by human operators), and semi-automatic (by collaboration between human operators and automatic machines). Most of the current studies on visual inspection have been focused on the improvement of automatic detection performance by developing a better automatic machine using computer vision technologies. However, there are still a range of situations where human operators should conduct visual inspection with/without automatic machines. In this situation, human operators’performance of visual inspection is significant to the successful quality control. However, visual inspection of components assembled into a mobile camera module belongs to those situations. This study aims to investigate human performance issues in visual inspection of the components, paying more attention to human errors. For this, Abstraction Hierarchy-based work domain modeling method was applied to examine a range of direct or indirect factors related to human errors and their relationships in the visual inspection of the components. Although this study was conducted in the context of manufacturing mobile camera modules, the proposed method would be easily generalized into other industries.

This paper is aimed at proposing a new approach to connecting the measurements of customer satisfaction on healthcare services with the prioritized identification of healthcare service processes to be improved. As customers’ requirements for healthcare services have become too diverse and healthcare service systems have been increasingly complex, there has been growing interest in the customer-oriented evaluation of healthcare service quality and the systematic improvement of healthcare service processes. Most of the previous studies on service quality evaluation are based on SERVQUAL model. However, because of the unique characteristics and constraints inherent in healthcare service systems, it has been reported that SERVQUAL would be inadequate to be applied to healthcare service systems. As an alternative, SERVPERF has recently been widely used in the evaluation of healthcare service quality. However, there is a lack of studies on how to use the measurements of healthcare service quality systematically to improve service functions and processes. With this issue in mind, we firstly measured the customer-perceived satisfaction on the healthcare service quality from the six dimensions based on SERVPERF. Then we identified the relationships between the subjective measurements and healthcare service processes through brainstorming and expert interview. By using the relationships, we developed a customer journey map in healthcare services that visually describe the interaction between customers and healthcare service systems. The developed customer journey map would help service designers easily identify a healthcare service process that needs to be improved with priority. It is expected that the design improvement process proposed in this study would be a useful method for enhancing the quality of healthcare services.

This paper addresses the problem of how to effectively use virtual reality(VR) for improving the quality of safety training systems. As the working environment and the working system in the industry are more and more complex and large-scaled, the concern with system safety is accordingly growing. Safety training systems are regarded as an effective way for increasing workers’ interest in system safety and enhancing their ability of preventing and handling accidents/incidents. Recently, it has been reported that VR would be effectively used for improving the quality of safety training systems, with its technically specialized features. However, little attention has been given to the problem of how to effectively use VR for safety training systems. In order to make the best use of new technology such as VR, it is important to examine its advantages and disadvantages and the contexts to which its use can be beneficial. This paper firstly reviews the current status of safety training systems and the use of VR for safety training systems in the inside and outside of the country. Next, we summarize the interview with safety managers in four manufacturing companies, which was conducted to understand the requirements of stake-holders of the issue. Based on the review and the interview, we suggested the ways of using VR in safety training systems in an effective manner. They are described from the four perspectives: development and maintenance cost, lack of specialized workers, design of accident scenarios used with VR, and empirical demonstration of the effectiveness of VR in safety training.

The types and characteristics of services that airport service systems provide have recently been diversified and specialized to meet various needs of users and their travelling activities. A service for the mobility handicapped is one of the newly demanded services. However, current services for them, which are provided by most of the Korean airports, are not sufficient to satisfy their needs. Additionally, there exist a lot of constraints in the use of those services, which makes it difficult for the mobility handicapped to use them effectively. Another problem is that a lot of the mobility handicapped do not even know that airports now offer services specialized for them. Considering that Korean airports have been recognized as a top-level service provider for about decades, it can be claimed that such an inferior quality of services for the mobility handicapped should be urgently improved. With this issue in mind, this study aims to propose an approach to improving the quality of airport services for the mobility handicapped. Firstly, we examined the actual conditions of the services for the mobility handicapped and identified the limitations of the current services, based on the results of literature review and questionnaire survey against the mobility handicapped and stakeholders of the services currently provided. Then we established a set of design improvement requirements and suggested several ways to improve the services for the mobility handicapped. Finally, we pointed out several issues to be resolved to design better specialized services for the mobility handicapped.

Aviation safety is increasingly important to secure the safety of the Republic of Korea Air Force (ROKAF). A critical activity for enhancing aviation safety is to analyze an accident throughly and to identify causes that can explain it reasonably. The results of such a systematic accident investigation can be effectively used for improving information displays, task procedures, and training systems as well as for reorganizing team structure and communication control system. However, the current practice of analyzing aviation accidents in ROKAF is too superficial and simple to diagnose them systematically. Additionally, the current practice does not give a full consideration to human factors that have been identified as main causes of most of the aviation accidents. With this issue in mind, this study aims to suggest a new approach to analyzing aviation accidents related to human factors.The proposed method is developed on the basis of several models and frameworks about system safety, human error, and human-system interaction. Its application to forty-two human factors-related accidents, which have occurred in ROKAF during the last ten years, showed that the proposed method could be a useful tool for analyzing aviation accidents caused by human factors.

A prerequisite for improving the quality of a product is to enhance the quality of its parts supplied from outsourced enterprises. An enterprise certified by ISO 9001 Quality Management System is expected to develop their effective quality assurance system and maintain it through continuous control and improvement, thereby ensuring the good quality of products that they produce. However, it is reported that small and medium–sized enterprises certified by ISO 9001 have difficulty establishing an effective quality assurance system. This study aims to propose a new method of improving a quality assurance system that can be more effective in small and medium–sized enterprises. This study collectively considered requirements specified in several international standards on quality system and the results of expert group brainstorming to identify evaluation areas and items for assessing a quality assurance system. Based on these evaluation areas and items, a set of checklists for diagnosing and improving a quality assurance system was developed. In order to demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed method, this study applied it to ten small and medium-sized enterprises and could identify four approaches for improving their current quality assurance system. The presented improvement method, which consists of establishment of quality goals and quality innovation plan, defective products corrective activities, 4M and design change process, improvement of customer quality information management, is expected to be utilized as a useful tool for the enhancement of the quality assurance system of small and medium-sized enterprises.

As a work analysis technique, Work Domain Analysis (WDA) aims to identify the design knowledge structure of a work domain that human operators interact with through human-system interfaces. Abstraction hierarchy (AH) is a multi-level, hierarchical knowledge representation framework for modeling the functional structure of any kinds of systems. Thus, WDA based on AH aims to identify the functional knowledge structure of a work domain. AH has been used in a range of work domains and problems to model their functional knowledge structure and has proven its generality and usefulness. However, many of researchers and system designers have reported that it is never easy to understand the concepts underlying AH and use it effectively for WDA. This would be because WDA is a form of work analysis that is different from other types of work analysis techniques such as task analysis and AH has several unique characteristics that are differentiated from other types of function analysis techniques used in systems engineering. With this issue in mind, this paper introduces the concepts of WDA based on AH and offers a comprehensive list of references. Next, this paper proposes a set of principles for effectively applying AH for work domain analysis, which are developed based on the author's experiences, consultation with experts, and literature reviews.

공정제어시스템과 같은 복잡한 시스템을 감시하고 제어하기 위한 정보 디스플레이를 설계하기 위해 두 가지의 세부적인 설계문제를 효과적으로 다루어야 한다. 정보디스플레이에서 표현할 정보의 내용을 파악하고 조직화하는 문제와 그 표현할 정보를 시각적으로 잘 표현하는 문제로 구분이 된다. Ecological Interface Design (EID)는 두 문제를 다루기 위한 이론적 배경지식과 방법을 제공하는 정보디스플레이 설계의 틀이다. EID는 1990년대 초반에

소프트웨어 기반의 시스템 설계과정에서 설계자가 고려해야 하는 요소들이 다양해지면서 시스템 설계가 점점 어려워지고 있다. 다양한 설계 요소들이 존재하지만 사용자의 특성 및 직무, 사용가능한 정보기술의 특성 등이 핵심적인 요소로 간주된다. 또한 정보기술이 발달하면서 인간과 시스템의 상호작용이 점점 인지적인 특징을 지니게 되었다. 따라서 사용성 높고, 효율적이면서 안전한 소프트웨어 기반의 시스템을 개발하기 위해서는 시스템 설계자가 사용자의 인지적인 요구사항

Development of human-system interfaces (HSI) supporting the interaction between human and automation-based systems, particularly safety-critical sociotechnial systems, entails a wide range of design and evaluation problems. To help HSI designers deal with these problems, many methodologies from traditional human-computer interaction, software engineering, and systems engineering have been applied; however, they have been proved inadequate to develop cognitively well engineered HSI. This paper takes a viewpoint that HSI development is itself a cognitive process consisting of various decision making and problem solving activities and then proposes a design requirements-driven process for developing HSI. High-level design problems and their corresponding design requirements for visual information display are explained to clarify the concept of design requirements. Lastly, conceptual design of software system to support the requirements-driven process and designers' knowledge management is described.