2016 Volume 20 Issue 2 Pages 45-62
In recent years, the number of younger operators increases in the Japanese industrial plants because of the alternation of generations. The operation manual becomes more important for the safe and stable operations. We analyzed the reported trouble cases happened in the petroleum and nuclear industries due to the problems of operation manuals. The analyses revealed that most of the trouble cases were caused by insufficient information in the part of remarks in operation manuals. This study investigates experimentally the influence of insufficient information in the part of remarks in operation manuals on the performance of novice plant operators using a semi-scale boiler type power generation plant. Two types of operation manuals are prepared for the experiment. The first one is the set of original operation manuals. That is, this type includes all information described in the original operation manuals. The other type of operation manuals has some missing information in the part. The experimental results show that the usage of the operation manuals describing all information has much effect to decrease the operation risk and the rate of omitting operation actions although the operation time to complete the task becomes longer. The sufficient description of the information has little effect on the understanding of operations.
