FROM OVERCOMING LIMITATIONS TO SECURING SAFETY: DEFINING THE NEW MISSION OF HUMAN-MACHINE SYSTEMS

Beginning with the launch of human factors engineering in 1945, but actually with intellectual roots that go back to at least the school of Scientific Management, the design of human-machine systems (HMS) has been focused on overcoming human limitations and constraining human performance variability. This approach is, however, only warranted if the work environment is simple enough to be tractable. While this may have been the case 50 years ago, it is no longer so. Most work systems today are intractable, due to tight couplings and non-linear interactions. Under these conditions human performance variability becomes an asset rather than a liability, and the goal of HMS design should therefore be to enhance the capabilities of humans rather than to constrain them.