During the next decade and beyond, the ability to maintain a meaningful level of military readiness will be severely tested. Simply increasing the Defense budget is not sufficient. Modern weapon and support systems are increasing in sophistication and user-system interface complexity, while the human resources pool to operate and maintain these systems is decreasing in terms of both numbers of individuals and the aptitudes, abilities, and skills these individuals bring into a military organization. This situation leads to the necessity of considering human resources as a parameter of system design, but such an effort is severely handicapped by a lack of efficient and reliable techniques that can be used by designers to estimate the human resource implications of their designs. The complexity of the systems on the drawing boards means that their contribution to the military capability and readiness will be critically influenced by (1) the extent to which new system designs are sensitized to the militaries available human and training resources and (2) the military ability to synchronize the planning, programming, and budgeting of these resources with systems development. Acquisition of new systems is a multi-billion dollar process, that is, the Weapon System Acquisition Process or WSAP. Determination of personnel and training requirements are usually considered so far downstream in the WSAP that the human resource requirements have been totally reactive to the fixed system design rather than being interactive with design engineering to influence the design for people. The results of this way of integrating people into a system means that hardware design has driven personnel and training requirements, rather than being a part of a procedure in which these requirements are used to influence equipment design or choices. Cost of personnel and training, low human reliability and increased human error in system failures are also valid reasons for now considering the topic question. The result is often predictable, that is, a large requirement for extremely limited technical personnel, inadequate training and, in many cases, degradation in operational effectiveness and personnel readiness. The four panelists take different and interesting approaches to the topic question. A case study; the utilization of a computer (for greater efficiency) during the development of a human aptitude/assessment technique; a discussion and update of the HARDMAN (hardware acquisition/manpower integration) project; and a response to the topic question from a policy point of view and asks another question, Why should personnel and training requirements have an influence on design?
Enhancing Maritime Crew Resource Management Training by Applying Resilience Engineering: A Case Study of the Bachelor Maritime Officer Training Programme in Rotterdam
