A Study on the Contribution of Human Error to Management Tasks Based on Questionnaire Survey

Abstract

A modern ship is comprised of many elements which may be fully automated, they still require a degree of human intervention. A number of recent vessels related incidents suggests due to the absence of a fully implemented safety culture is still an issue. The experiences indicate that an average of 90% of marine casualties is rooted in human error worldwide. In order to minimize maritime accidents, it is essential to focus on the factors of human errors. However, human error prediction is quite a difficult task in maritime transportation due to the uncertainty and inadequacy of quantitative human error data. The purpose of this study is to identify and analyze the main factors affecting the human error using factor analysis on masters and officers’ responses in the ship navigation field. The survey questionnaire related to the research subjects were identified as fatigue, training, operational skill, workloads, management task and human error. First, the preliminary variables of education and training outcomes were researched and designed, and hypotheses were set up. For collecting the basic data, statistical analysis was conducted to analyze the effects of the descriptive statistics, reliability, and validity of variables, structural equation analysis, and mediation effects. This study analyzes human error by taking the perspectives of vessel operating master and chief officers using structural equation modeling. From an academic standpoint, this issue of measuring human error has become increasingly important in the topic in this field as we mentioned early. The existing human error model is very rare and comes from the general aviation, nuclear and chemical plants. Most of them are not adjustable for the maritime, especially shipping navigation. The scale comprised 17 variables representing the six latent variables of fatigue, training, operational skills, workloads, management tasks, and human error. Several statistical examinations were conducted in an effort to evaluate the effectiveness of this study. The results show that there is a significant effect of workload, training and management tasks to the human error occurrences. The direct experience of manager tasks can decrease human error and also influence more by increasing training courses. The indirect experience such as workloads can increase human error. However, increasing manager controls over workloads well can reduce its effect on human error occurrence. The study not only confirms the observation that training is an important part of managerial tasks, but also it is important for reducing accidents frequency. Proper management control is an important factor influencing human error. However, the managers should pay attention to the strict control over masters cannot reduce all human errors, because more workloads affect to human error increase. As the shipping navigation becomes automated, there still continues to increase in human error. To establish a strong strategy to decrease human error, the shipping companies could focus to increase its control over the master and officers and also should increase training courses updated navigation equipment. However, there is a lack of supporting empirical evidence in the shipping field. This study was designed to explore this gap in the research. Therefore, the results derived from this research provide several practical implications for shipping navigation managers, master, and officers, specifically, in terms of how to decrease the accidents in the vessel.