Human Factor Interrelationships to Improve Worker Reliability: Implementation of MCDM in the Agri-Food Sector

Abstract

Performance Shaping Factors (PSFs) are contextual, individual, and cognitive factors used in Human Reliability Analysis (HRA) to quantify the worker contribution to errors when performing a generic task. Although the empirical evidence demonstrates the existence of PSF interrelationships, the majority of HRA methods assume their independence. As a consequence, the resulting Human Error Probability (HEP) might be over- or underestimated. To deal with this issue, only a few qualitative guidelines or statistical-based approaches have been proposed so far. While the former are not well structured, the latter require a high computational effort and a proper number of input data. Therefore, the present paper provides an alternative approach to deal with the PSFs interaction issue to facilitate the identification of the most influential human factors on which to take corrective actions. To this purpose, Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) methods may represent a structured, effortless, and easily replicable framework. Owing to their ability to deal with the interdependence of decision factors, DEMATEL and ANP are hence considered and afterwards compared, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses. Both methods are implemented in an agri-food company which produces pistachios in Southern Italy.