DIFFERENT LEVELS OF ANALYZING PROCESS-CONTROL TASKS

The investigation of one industrial situation, the production of insulation panels of expanded polystyrene, is used here as a support for a general procedural presentation aiming at in-depth analysis of the task of operators assigned to process control work.This analysis begins with a global description of the functional whole, inside which is found the elementary system consisting of the controller and of his device. It continues by progressively narrowing the field in an attempt to define precisely the different aspects of the task of controller. Finally, having determined the demands of the task, it concludes with a study of the mental processes involved in meeting these demands. A particular feature of this sort of procedure is the distinction drawn between analysis of the requirements of the task and analysis of the operator's activity. However, since it is necessary to describe task demands in terms of the operator's perception of them rather than in formal engineering terms, attempts at analysis in the two spheres must be carefully coordinated. © 1979 Taylor & Francis Group LLC.