Smith-Spark, James H. and Katz, Hillary B. and Marchant, Alexander and Wilcockson, Thomas (2015) Label-checking strategies to adapt behaviour to design. In: ECCE '15 Proceedings of the European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics 2015 :. ACM, New York. ISBN 9781450336123
Smith_Spark_Katz_Marchant_Wilcockson_ECCE_2015_3_.pdf - Accepted Version
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Abstract
Despite robust quality control procedures, labelling errors on fresh produce are estimated to cost the UK supermarket industry approximately £50million pounds per year in product recalls and wastage. Changing the format of the labels themselves is not a viable option. Instead, the challenge is to change or guide human operatives' behaviour so that label printing errors do not go undetected during quality control procedures. To this end, a simulated label checking task was presented to naïve participants to compare more systematic and strategic methods of label checking. Two conditions in which behaviour was computer-led were compared with a control condition in which checkers adopted their own idiosyncratic checking method. The data indicate that the two computer-led approaches resulted in improved levels of accuracy. Pushing label checkers towards a more systematic approach would appear to be effective in reducing undetected label errors, and could lead potentially to significant financial savings and reduced environmental wastage in the fresh produce industry.