A study of control room staffing and workload from the human information processing perspective

This study examines the effectiveness of information presentation and task operation in the main control room (MCR) from the human information processing (HIP) perspective. Their influences on operator workloads and implications to staffing are also discussed. The personnel from the Lungmen Nuclear Power Plant in Taiwan were selected as the target sample. A Total of 75 valid questionnaires were analyzed. The results showed that there were significantly different ldquoperceptionrdquo, ldquocognitionrdquo, ldquovocal responserdquo, and ldquoworkloadrdquo between the shift supervisor (SS), reactor operator (RO), and assistant reactor operator (ARO). These different stages of HIP were positively correlated with each other. The result also showed that the workload of the operator was correlated with how they were involved in the HIP stages. This HIP analysis provides a useful way to further understand why their workload might be different with respect to their staffing roles and responsibilities in a hope to re-organize and redesign their tasks in order to prevent from human errors in the future.