Search results

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the human factors/ergonomics (HFE) studies for respirator.

This review paper describes and discusses the various factors and methodologies of HFE, for the purpose of better considering human factors, used in respirator studies and further human-centered product development.

Many attempts have been made to study human factors for respirators mainly including fit, human performance, comfort, and mood. Physical, psychological, and physiological indices of people are extremely valuable to HFE studies for respirator. Objective and subjective measures were methodologies widely used. Quantitative and qualitative approaches were adopted to illustrate the human performance and well-being influenced by respirators. A summary table presented with major methods used for indices of respirators in the field of HFE. According to the current researches, this review indicated three particular challenges facing HFE studies of respirators now.

With the ever increasing role of protection from air pollution in society, respirator has become an increasingly important part of our daily lives. HFE intervene in optimizing the relationships between respirators and the human using them. Plenty of efforts have been dedicated for the development of protection capability, but HFE studies for respirators are lacking. In recent years, there has been a tremendous interest in introducing HFE research methods that can evaluate respirators from the perspective of human and translate them into constraints for designing human-centered respirators.

This is a first paper in the field of HFE studies for respirator, which will remain helpful to the scientific community to start further human-centered research work and product development.

The purpose of this paper is to review current literature analyzing human factors in maintenance, and areas in need of further research are suggested.

The review applies a novel framework for systematically categorizing human factors in maintenance into three major categories: human error/reliability calculation, workplace design/macro-ergonomics and human resource management. The framework further incorporates two well-known human factor frameworks, i.e., the Swiss Cheese model and the ergonomic domains framework.

Human factors in maintenance is a pressing problem. The framework yields important insights regarding the influence of human factors in maintenance decision making. By incorporating various approaches, a robust framework for analyzing human factors in maintenance is derived.

The framework assists decision makers and maintenance practitioners to evaluate the influence of human factors from different perspectives, e.g. human error, macro-ergonomics, work planning and human performance. Moreover, the review addresses an important subject in maintenance decision making more so in view of few human error reviews in maintenance literature.

There is the need to focus on humans while designing engineering facilities for users. The need to focus on Nigerians when designing for them is presented in this paper. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Relevant literatures were consulted on the history of ergonomics and its importance was stressed. Some instances where ergonomics should be applied in the country were identified.

The paper observed that the application of ergonomics in Nigeria is low and some constraints that are militating against the use of ergonomics in Nigeria are discussed.

The paper suggested ways to fully imbibe the use of human-centered engineering (ergonomics) in Nigeria.