The design of a management decision support tool for an ergonomics problem reporting system

Oil refineries are inherently dangerous work environments. Petrobras, a Brazilian company, is at the forefront of improving safety in the production of crude oil and oil products. The Sistema de Informacao de SMS do abastecimento (SISA) is an ergonomics reporting system implemented by Petrobras. This system supports identifying and resolving ergonomic problems at their refineries. Refinery health managers are ultimately responsible for the resolution of ergonomic problems. While SISA supports problem entering and tracking, it does not support management related decision-making. This paper describes an operational concept for a decision support tool that contains such functionality. It presents a task analysis that gives rise to those concepts. It presents information, processing, and output requirements to support the operational concept and task analysis.