MENTAL LOADING OF PROCESS OPERATORS : AN ATTEMPT TO DEVISE A METHOD OF ANALYSIS AND ASSESSMENT

The paper describes some work done by Imperial Chemical Industries as part of a study of the non-physical contribution of process operators. A tentative procedure was developed which hail as its basis a detailed study of job requirements and a method of classifying types of mental load. A points scoring system was devised inorder to attempt to quantify these classes of mental load. As the experiment progressed, the 'technique' developed into a systematic method of analysing decision-taking situations and an arbitrary procedure for comparing these situations quantitatively. The approach was essentially of the ' works-experimental ' type. The main results of the experiment were the clarification of ideas on non-physical contribution and some indications for future work.