Human performance reliability: a historical perspective

From the view-point of most engineers, product development managers, and program managers, human performance reliability (HPR) is a black art. Although HPR importantly affects system, product, and process operations, there is little recognition of its impact. To increase the awareness of the impact of HPR, this paper provides a brief historical sketch of the subject. One can roughly divide the evolution of HPR into 4 phases: origins of HPR, US Navy development in the late 1960s and 1970s, US Nuclear Regulatory Commission high intensity period of the 1980s, and self-reappraisal, transition period of the 1990s. HPR has come a long way since its formal inception in the 1950s. Great strides have been made in modeling HPR and in collecting the data for HPR analyses. There is ample literature on the subject. However, there is still the need to move HPR into the mainstream of system and process development, because the consequences of inadequate design for reliable human performance can be physically dangerous and/or expensive.