Block off: an examination of new control room configurations and reduced crew sizes examining engineered production blocking

Neville A. Stanton,Aaron P. J. Roberts

doi:10.1007/s10111-019-00542-x

Neville A. Stanton, Aaron P. J. Roberts

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10111-019-00542-x

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Abstract

Previous research has shown a potential bottleneck of communication of information between the sonar controller (SOC) and operations officer (OPSO) in submarine sound and control rooms. This research aimed to see if this bottleneck could be removed by co-locating the sound and control room teams. Further, it also looked at the effects of reducing the crew numbers. Ten teams preformed the return to periscope depth tasks during high and low demand in a simulated submarine control room. Activities and communications of the teams were recorded and compared with data from a baseline condition of contemporary operations. The findings show that the co-location of the sound room and control room teams relieved the bottleneck of communications between the SOC and OPSO. Although communications increased, this was more balanced across team members and more relative to operational demand. This was coupled with more efficient task completion, resulting in greater number of tasks being completed by the command teams. Reduced crewing led to greater communications between the remaining members of the team together with task shedding in the higher demand condition. Future research should contrast these findings with objective measures of task performance to better understand potential performance benefits.

Highlights

The digital revolution has seen advancements in technology, computing processing capacity and sensor capabilities that is changing ways of working across many domains (Brynjolfsson and McAfee 2011)
In the reduced crew size condition the average frequency of communications between operators in the command team varied depending on command team role and scenario demand
The current work compared the functionality of submarine command teams completing a return to periscope depth (RTPD) in a representation of a contemporary operational control room configuration, a co-location configuration and reduced crew size

Summary

Introduction

The digital revolution has seen advancements in technology, computing processing capacity and sensor capabilities that is changing ways of working across many domains (Brynjolfsson and McAfee 2011). Research has sought to develop new software algorithms and architectures to make the tracking of contacts by submarines more efficient and accurate (Shar and Li 2000; Wang et al 2011; Lim 2012). There is a drive to maximise productivity and reduce economic cost (Ireland and Schuh 2008; Brynjolfsson and Hitt 2000; Devaraj and Kohli 2003; Huddlestone and Harris 2017; Schutte 2017). This relies on the interaction of human operators and technology, with growing interdependence in pursuit of purposeful, goal-directed behaviours—the definition of a sociotechnical system (Walker et al 2009). Adopting a sociotechnical systems approach appreciates the complexities involved with systems and how their design can be improved (Stanton 2014; Stanton and Roberts 2017; Roberts and Stanton 2018; Klein et al 2003)

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