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Product usability testing and outcomes
Published in Alex Mihailidis, Roger Smith, Rehabilitation Engineering, 2023
Effectiveness is the extent to which the intended goals of use of the product are achieved, such as accuracy and completeness of specified tasks. Efficiency is the amount of effort or resources that have to be expended to achieve the intended goals. Satisfaction is the extent to which users find the product acceptable and the level of comfort felt when using a product to achieve the intended goals. This includes quantifying the strength of a user's subjectively expressed reactions, feelings, perceptions, attitudes or opinions. In other words, effectiveness and efficiency measure functional outcomes, whereas satisfaction is derived on the basis of how effective and efficient the device is in permitting activity engagement and participation (Arthanat and others 2007).
Design for safety
Published in Helle A. Oltedal, Margarera Lützhöft, Managing Maritime Safety, 2018
To improve safety, it is necessary to design ships and ship equipment with due regard to human factors in order to match with users’ abilities and requirements. This practice is, however, often neglected in the maritime industry. There is a need for a systematic approach for dissemination of this issue to all stakeholders in the industry as well as a request, and ideally a requirement, for all relevant parties to take action to follow human factors design practice. In establishing such an approach, the following factors have to be considered:Design solutions that consider the human element are developed by following human-centred design approach to provide design solutions based on users’ needs in the intended context of use.Project managers, naval architects and equipment designers should take account of the changes to resource and management requirements associated with the introduction of human-centred design activities to a project.Equipment designers and naval architects need to follow required practices prescribed in regulations and standards as well as refer to guidelines from classification societies for recommended applications.Besides safety, human-centred design also provides an economic benefit. An optimal design will increase effectiveness, efficiency, productivity and reduce maintenance cost. Furthermore, it is important to acknowledge that higher safety can also be perceived as monetary profit.Design principles need to be rebalanced between human and engineering factors, with stronger consideration placed on the human element. This issue needs to be addressed at the individual level through the incorporation of HF knowledge in the training syllabus for future industry designers, and at the organization level by enhancing the level of user-centredness among the industry’s organizations.
Corrective Maintenance
Published in B.S. Dhillon, Engineering Maintenance, 2002
Reduction in corrective maintenance time is useful to improve maintenance effectiveness. Some strategies for reducing the system-level corrective maintenance time are as follows:6Efficiency in fault recognition, location, and isolation: Past experience indicates that in electronic equipment, fault isolation and location consume the most time within a corrective maintenance activity. In the case of mechanical items, often the largest contributor is repair time. Factors such as well-designed fault indicators, good maintenance procedures, well-trained maintenance personnel, and an unambiguous fault isolation capability are helpful in lowering corrective maintenance time.Effective interchangeability: Good physical and functional interchangeability is useful in removing and replacing parts/items, reducing maintenance downtime, and creating a positive impact on spares and inventory needs.Redundancy: This is concerned with designing in redundant parts that can be switched in at the moment of need so the equipment/system continues to operate while the faulty part is being repaired. In this case the overall maintenance workload may not be reduced, but the equipment/system downtime could be impacted significantly.Effective accessibility: Often a significant amount of time is spent accessing the failed part. Proper attention to accessibility during design can help reduce part accessibility time and, in turn, the corrective maintenance time.Human factor considerations: Attention paid to human factors during design in areas such as readability of instructions, size, shape, and weight of components, selection and placement of dials and indicators, size and placement of access, gates, and readability, and information processing aids can help reduce corrective maintenance time significantly.
Data-driven predictive maintenance policy based on multi-objective optimization approaches for the component repairing problem
Published in Engineering Optimization, 2021
Ornella Pisacane, Domenico Potena, Sara Antomarioni, Maurizio Bevilacqua, Filippo Emanuele Ciarapica, Claudia Diamantini
In the context of industrial plants, achieving high reliability is fundamental and can be pursued by implementing effective maintenance policies, even considering its significant impact on a company's competitiveness and cost-effectiveness (Peng, Dong, and Zuo 2010). In industrial sectors characterized by high operational risk, the occurrence of component breakage is particularly critical since it may affect not only the plant's operation but also the integrity of the environment and people safety (Bevilacqua and Ciarapica 2018). As reported by the European Committee for Standardization (BS EN 13306:2017 2017), the following approaches should be taken into account in defining the most appropriate maintenance policy for an industrial environment: corrective maintenance: an intervention is carried out after a breakage occurrence in order to restore the normal system functioning;preventive maintenance: maintenance is carried out at predefined intervals or conditions;predictive maintenance: maintenance is carried out according to significant characteristics like the breakage forecast, suggested by estimations of the degradation state, or the component breakage probability.
Automated Dielectric Thermoscopy Characterization of Water-Contaminated Grease
Published in Tribology Transactions, 2019
Nicholas Dittes, Mikael Sjödahl, Anders Pettersson, Defeng Lang
Large machinery can have maintenance costs that cover 15–60% of the total cost of operation (1). Thus, the performance and cost-effectiveness of the machine can be improved by appropriate maintenance methods. Since practically all moving machines have rolling element bearings, and most rolling element bearings use grease as a lubricant, knowing when grease fails is a good start to improving reliability. Methods to predict this could include predictive algorithms based on heuristics (2) that use operating conditions to approximate the remaining useful life from previously measured data, or methods that take direct measurements. The latter require sensors for measuring the component of the machine for which prediction of failure is desired. In the case of this article, that is lubricating grease.
Modelling testing mechanism for mitigating genetically modified wheat contamination risks
Published in International Journal of Production Research, 2019
Houtian Ge, Stephan Goetz, Miguel Gómez, Richard Gray, James Nolan
A major contribution of this paper is to bring to the forefront the critical challenges posed by GM wheat contamination and provide a framework to identify a set of varietal testing strategies that help minimise the handling cost of the wheat SC. This study simulates an actual supply chain system in a realistic manner to assess costs and risks of GM wheat commercialisation and strategy to prevent risks. Simulation allows one to provide estimates of efficiency and effectiveness of systems and to assess the impact of changed input parameters on the resulting performance before implementing any decisions into real systems (Harrison, Carroll, and Carley 2007). The generated data in this study provide critical input into possible unforeseen consequences of testing schemes coupled with traceability mechanisms within the grain supply chain system under given levels of contamination risks. Our simulation results are suggestive of a range of regulation and policy issues surrounding the GM wheat issue. The remainder of the paper is structured as follows: first, the SC system involved in this study is specified. Then the methodology and variable and parameter data used for modelling are introduced, and elevator handlers’ cost function is defined. Subsequently, simulation of effective testing strategies is performed and discussed. Finally, sensitivity analysis is conducted to identify how testing strategies are affected by factors involved in decision-making, such as the producer’s misrepresentation probability. The paper ends with a summary and conclusion.