Human Inspection Work: A case study of why faults are missed?

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Visual inspection in order to assure quality control is a challenging field that is attracting increasing interest after a long period of silence due to the trust and hope in computers and automation. Human visual inspection is however a challenging area as it requires the designer of the system to take in to account demands and limitations of technical, economic and psychological nature. This study was conducted in a real world setting in cooperation with a company with manufacturing in East Asia. Semi-participant observations were used to study the work in the factory. The results from the study highlight the tremendous importance of not only taking the usual economical and technological considerations when designing a human inspection system. Humans have demands and limitations that the inspection/test system has to be adapted to. Human inspection/test performance was found to have large individual differences. The overall performance tended however to decline over the work shift although a main effect could not be statistically secured (p = .060). Paired samples t-test showed on the other hand significant results between work shift periods 1-3 and 2-3 and was very close between 1-4 (p = .052). Performance was also impaired by reduced test times as the correlation results show (rs = -.48, p = .001, 1-tailed). This research has also pointed out the danger with monotonous work tasks due to habituation and expectancy effects and the subs...