Title: Analysis of situation awareness-related incidents in the food manufacturing industry

Authors: Griffin M. Wilson; Richard T. Stone; Kristina M. Schaffhausen

Addresses: Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, USA ' Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, USA ' Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, USA

Abstract: A situation awareness (SA) oriented perspective on user errors and safety incidents has been widely used within aviation but seen almost no use in the manufacturing setting. This study was conducted with the objective of determining the prevalence of SA-related incidents in the food manufacturing industry. Incident investigations produced over a 72-week period from 37 different food manufacturing plants of one large multinational food producer were reviewed and categorised according to their SA-relatedness, the level of SA error occurring in each SA-related incident, and each SA errors' relation to Endsley's taxonomy of SA errors. The relationship between SA errors and amputations, life-altering and potentially life-altering incidents, and lockout-tagout violations is also analysed and discussed. We argue that taking this approach may reveal some novel design and training strategies which may reduce the occurrence of SA-related safety incidents in manufacturing.

Keywords: safety engineering; situation awareness; cognitive engineering; food manufacturing; ergonomics; user-centred design.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISE.2023.135772

International Journal of Industrial and Systems Engineering, 2023 Vol.45 No.4, pp.417 - 431

Received: 02 Sep 2021
Accepted: 20 Nov 2021
Published online: 05 Jan 2024 *

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