Towards Effective Training for Process and Maritime Industries

With the development of technological innovation, many industries such as process and maritime industries constitute more complex automated systems, dedicated operating conditions, multilevel interconnections, as well as human-machine and human-human interactions. The actions and decisions made by operators and seafarers affect the safety and productivity of these systems. It is well known that around 60-80% of the accidents are attributed to human error (directly or indirectly). Generally, each operator or seafarer is must undergo training before starting their real jobs. In recent decades, emphasis on operator training has increased – resulting in advance training simulators with several features like immersivity, stereoscopic sounds, hydraulics, and even use of different odors. However, the design of training methodology can have a significant impact on the skill acquisition of trainees. The growth of integration of technology in existing systems as well as newer systems is much higher than that of improvement in training methods. Unfortunately, there are few studies linking the training needs and the real-world demands on operators, revealing a significant research gap to fulfill.In socio-complex systems, it is necessary to consider various aspects in the training methodology, which can facilitate the operators/seafarers to handle normal and abnormal scenarios adequately. This paper provides a background of current training methods through analyzing the process- and maritime industries as illustrative examples, highlighting the limitations associated with each of different perspectives (technical, psychological and organizational) to propose an training syllabus that allows for learning by experience and interaction with scenarios of different complexity. It consists of a three-stage hierarchy with increasing demands concerning technical and relational complexity and time pressure. The training is centered on handling real-time operations with increasing complexity starting from basic components of the process, advancing to real-time operations, and reaching high technical and relational complexity that needs to be handled in situations with limited time and uncertainty in data. The challenges that arise in team-working tasks are also considered in the conceptualization of the training syllabus. The proposed training syllabus includes training content, objectives and performance evaluation criteria. The systematic methodology of performance evaluation will allow practitioners to obtain transparent, unbiased and consistent certification of trainees.