Considering Social Effects in Control System Design – A Summary

Abstract

Automation that is appropriate for application in realistically complex sociotechnical domains should be based on an integrated understanding of the technical, human, organizational, ecologic, economic and even cultural attributes of the application. Moreover, it is the engineer's responsibility to consider the direct and indirect effects of the automation technology being used. In order to integrate comprehensive sets of requirements into system planning and design, one must understand them in terms of causes and effects, dependencies and contradicitons, and short-und long-term effects. Integration is, therefore, a question of balancing different valuesA design philosophy is advocated which aims at developing the means whereby people in complex systems can achieve the operational objectives for which they are responsible: people are in chargeThe key questions for man-machine interface, control room and team design is, then, how to support operators so that they can be in charge successfullyInnovative design concepts, principles and methods will be summarized. Encouraging experiences show how such approaches lead to better overall system performance. Much research on open questions remains to be done, though