Block off: an examination of new control room configurations and reduced crew sizes examining engineered production blocking
Block off: an examination of new control room configurations and reduced crew sizes examining engineered production blocking
Previous research has shown a potential bottleneck of communication of information between the sonar controller (SOC) and operations officer (OPSO) in submarine sound and control rooms. This research aimed to see if this bottleneck could be removed by co-locating the sound and control room teams. Further, it also looked at the effects of reducing the crew numbers. Ten teams preformed the return to periscope depth tasks during high and low demand in a simulated submarine control room. Activities and communications of the teams were recorded and compared with data from a baseline condition of contemporary operations. The findings show that the co-location of the sound room and control room teams relieved the bottleneck of communications between the SOC and OPSO. Although communications increased, this was more balanced across team members and more relative to operational demand. This was coupled with more efficient task completion, resulting in greater number of tasks being completed by the command teams. Reduced crewing led to greater communications between the remaining members of the team together with task shedding in the higher demand condition. Future research should contrast these findings with objective measures of task performance to better understand potential performance benefits.
Communications, Networks, Reduced crew, Submarine, Team work
29-55
Stanton, Neville A.
351a44ab-09a0-422a-a738-01df1fe0fadd
Roberts, Aaron P.J.
a2fb35d9-a42f-4a07-848d-01cecae9d893
February 2020
Stanton, Neville A.
351a44ab-09a0-422a-a738-01df1fe0fadd
Roberts, Aaron P.J.
a2fb35d9-a42f-4a07-848d-01cecae9d893
Stanton, Neville A. and Roberts, Aaron P.J.
(2020)
Block off: an examination of new control room configurations and reduced crew sizes examining engineered production blocking.
Cognition, Technology and Work, 22 (1), .
(doi:10.1007/s10111-019-00542-x).
Abstract
Previous research has shown a potential bottleneck of communication of information between the sonar controller (SOC) and operations officer (OPSO) in submarine sound and control rooms. This research aimed to see if this bottleneck could be removed by co-locating the sound and control room teams. Further, it also looked at the effects of reducing the crew numbers. Ten teams preformed the return to periscope depth tasks during high and low demand in a simulated submarine control room. Activities and communications of the teams were recorded and compared with data from a baseline condition of contemporary operations. The findings show that the co-location of the sound room and control room teams relieved the bottleneck of communications between the SOC and OPSO. Although communications increased, this was more balanced across team members and more relative to operational demand. This was coupled with more efficient task completion, resulting in greater number of tasks being completed by the command teams. Reduced crewing led to greater communications between the remaining members of the team together with task shedding in the higher demand condition. Future research should contrast these findings with objective measures of task performance to better understand potential performance benefits.
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Stanton-Roberts2019_Article_BlockOffAnExaminationOfNewCont
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More information
Accepted/In Press date: 28 January 2019
e-pub ahead of print date: 14 February 2019
Published date: February 2020
Additional Information:
Funding Information:
This work was supported in part by the Human Sciences Domain of the UK Ministry of Defence Scientific Research Pro-gramme, contract TIN3.113. Any views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the Ministry of Defence or any other UK government department.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019, The Author(s).
Keywords:
Communications, Networks, Reduced crew, Submarine, Team work
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 428601
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/428601
ISSN: 1435-5558
PURE UUID: 26e1ca22-c3af-4fce-a424-c62f6729938f
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Date deposited: 04 Mar 2019 17:30
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 04:01
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