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Home > Stacker News > Articles > WANO Workshops  
 

Stacking aids analysis in human performance.

Stacking is used in the class we hold to help to investigate 'events' that happen at a nuclear power station, says Paul DiRito, WANO Expert Instructor at their Root Cause Seminar. Along with Gary Hughes, seminars are held throughout the world in spots as diverse as Romania and Brazil, use stacking as an initial warm up exercise on human performance.

In the seminars, the "class" is broken up into three groups. Each group is timed on how long it takes to have each team member stack and unstack the cups. The initial go-through is done without any training or practicing.

 

Gary Hughes took the stacking concept to Bratislava, Slovakia and England to use in teaching human performance.

He found stacking to be a great way to demonstrate to very worldly, competent nuclear engineers that even "easy" tasks are difficult until you master the right techniques, and if you have to ask people to do the same task in a different way, they have to stop and think about each step until they have done it often enough that their brains automatically move their hands in the correct sequence.

Gary shows the tape of Speed Stackers stacking to his group and the engineers are clearly impressed that the kids are so much more competent than they at performing what sounds like an easy task - stacking and unstacking cups.

 
       
 
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    At the end of the day, the same exercise is repeated, only now the groups are allowed to use some of the tools they have learned in the class. The leader is allowed to brief the team and strategize. They are shown how to do the task quickly on the video. They are allowed to practice. They develop contingencies. Naturally, they do much better on the second-go-round.    
         
       
   

 

    
   

The real message is that stacking is a very simple task and applying human performance improvement tools even to this type of task shows great improvement. Therefore, even better results should be realized in applying the tools to tasks performed in a power plant.

    
         
       
         
    During the event investigation training, attendees are taught to look for where these types of human performance tools are not used and how their use might have prevented or minimized an event.    
   

   
    "A side benefit of using Speed Stacks is that it is an activity that gets involvement", says Paul. He adds, "between traveling, I had left the Speed Stacks on our kitchen table. It was interesting to watch my two boys, on their own, ask to watch the stacking video and then start 'playing' with the cups."    
       
 
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