INTEGRATE HUMAN FACTORS IN SYSTEM ENGINEERING

Purpose

This section describes the human factors engineer’s role in system engineering. System engineering is the translation of operational requirements into design, development, and implementation concepts, requirements, and specifications. 

The Human Factors Coordinator assists the Government’s and contractor’s system engineering effort by integrating human factors within the acquisition process. Identifying the human performance boundaries, risks, trade-offs, and opportunities of the system engineering options and alternatives does this. Human factors engineering is applied during design, development, and implementation of systems, software, and facilities to effectively integrate human resource and performance considerations. A human factors engineering effort is conducted to:

• Develop or improve human interfaces of the system,
• Achieve required effectiveness of human performance during system operation, maintenance, and support, and
• Make economical demands upon personnel resources, skills, training, and costs.
  
  

Timing

Human factors in the system engineering process is initiated in the Investment Analysis phase of the acquisition process and continues through Solution Implementation and into In-Service Management.

“How To”

System engineering is an interdisciplinary approach to evolve and verify an integrated and lifecycle-balanced set of system product and process solutions that satisfy customer needs.  The Human Factors Coordinator assists in the system engineering task by contributing information related to design enhancements, safety features, automation impacts, human-system performance trade-offs, ease of use, and workload. The Human Factors Coordinator also assists in identifying potential task overloading or skill creep for system operators and maintainers.  Where user teams or operator juries and representatives participate in achieving an operational viewpoint to design, the IPT human factors engineer complements the effort to ensure performance data represents more than individual preferences. Optimally, the Human Factors Coordinator participates fully in system engineering design decisions. 

While the actual design and development work may be completed by either the government or the contractor, the IPT Human Factors Coordinator (in conjunction with the human factors user group) provides close, continuous direction throughout the acquisition process.  To accomplish this, the Human Factors Coordinator reviews all documentation for human performance impacts that will affect total system performance and exercises his or her responsibility by participating in technical meetings and system engineering design reviews. The human factors engineering effort includes those system engineering tasks and activities listed below. The human engineer actively participates in four major interrelated areas of system engineering:

·         Planning

·         Analysis

·         Design and Development

·         Test and Evaluation

Steps

Step 1 Human Factors Engineering in Planning

Step 2 Human Factors Engineering in System Analysis

Step 3 Human Factors Engineering in Detail Design

Step 4 Human Factors Engineering in Test and Evaluation

Checklist