Murray Susan L, Harputlu Emrah, Mentzer Ray A, Mannan M Sam
Professor Engineering Management & Systems Engineering, Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla, Missouri.
Mary Kay O'Connor Process Safety Center (MKOPSC), Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas.
J Emerg Manag. 2014 Nov-Dec;12(6):479-86. doi: 10.5055/jem.2014.0211.
Operators have a crucial role during emergencies at a variety of facilities such as chemical processing plants. When an abnormality occurs in the production process, the operator often has limited time to either take corrective actions or evacuate before the situation becomes deadly. It is crucial that system designers and safety professionals can estimate the time required for a response before procedures and facilities are designed and operations are initiated. There are existing industrial engineering techniques to establish time standards for tasks performed at a normal working pace. However, it is reasonable to expect the time required to take action in emergency situations will be different than working at a normal production pace. It is possible that in an emergency, operators will act faster compared to a normal pace. It would be useful for system designers to be able to establish a time range for operators' response times for emergency situations. This article develops a modeling approach to estimate the time standard range for operators taking corrective actions or following evacuation procedures in emergency situations. This will aid engineers and managers in establishing time requirements for operators in emergency situations. The methodology used for this study combines a well-established industrial engineering technique for determining time requirements (predetermined time standard system) and adjustment coefficients for emergency situations developed by the authors. Numerous videos of workers performing well-established tasks at a maximum pace were studied. As an example, one of the tasks analyzed was pit crew workers changing tires as quickly as they could during a race. The operations in these videos were decomposed into basic, fundamental motions (such as walking, reaching for a tool, and bending over) by studying the videos frame by frame. A comparison analysis was then performed between the emergency pace and the normal working pace operations to determine performance coefficients. These coefficients represent the decrease in time required for various basic motions in emergency situations and were used to model an emergency response. This approach will make hazardous operations requiring operator response, alarm management, and evacuation processes easier to design and predict. An application of this methodology is included in the article. The time required for an emergency response was roughly a one-third faster than for a normal response time.
在诸如化工加工厂等各类设施的紧急情况中，操作员发挥着关键作用。当生产过程出现异常时，操作员通常只有有限的时间来采取纠正措施或在情况变得致命之前撤离。在设计程序和设施以及启动运营之前，系统设计师和安全专业人员能够估算出响应所需的时间至关重要。现有的工业工程技术可用于为以正常工作节奏执行的任务制定时间标准。然而，可以合理预期在紧急情况下采取行动所需的时间将与正常生产节奏下的工作时间不同。在紧急情况下，操作员有可能比正常节奏行动得更快。对于系统设计师而言，能够为紧急情况下操作员的响应时间确定一个时间范围将会很有帮助。本文开发了一种建模方法，用于估算操作员在紧急情况下采取纠正措施或遵循撤离程序的时间标准范围。这将有助于工程师和管理人员确定紧急情况下操作员的时间要求。本研究使用的方法结合了一种成熟的用于确定时间要求的工业工程技术（预定时间标准系统）以及作者开发的针对紧急情况的调整系数。研究了大量工人以最快速度执行既定任务的视频。例如，分析的其中一项任务是维修站工作人员在比赛期间尽快更换轮胎。通过逐帧研究这些视频，将其中的操作分解为基本的、基础的动作（如行走、伸手拿工具和弯腰）。然后对紧急节奏和正常工作节奏的操作进行比较分析，以确定性能系数。这些系数代表了紧急情况下各种基本动作所需时间的减少，并用于模拟应急响应。这种方法将使需要操作员响应、警报管理和撤离过程的危险操作更容易设计和预测。本文还包含了该方法的一个应用实例。应急响应所需的时间比正常响应时间大约快三分之一。
