Wednesday, December 17, 2014
What is it?
The Army G-1 Human Systems Integration (Army HSI), formerly known as Manpower and Personnel Integration (MANPRINT), is a practice that the U.S. Army uses to make sure human factors such as capabilities and limitations are incorporated into all of the steps during the system acquisition process.
HSI’s mission is to optimize total system performance, reduce life cycle costs, and minimize risk of Soldier loss or injury. This is accomplished by ensuring a systematic integration of Soldier characteristics and materiel design throughout the system development process. Army HSI is the voice of the Soldier and helps to ensure that the Soldiers can operate the systems effectively to accomplish their missions to defend the nation.
What is the Army doing?
The Army ensures Soldiers’ skills and capabilities are considered and planned for in systems acquisition process. In 1986, the Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Max Thurman, established the MANPRINT directorate to address the systematic inattention to human issues within the Army. Office of the Secretary of Defense adopted the concept in 1987 and named it Human Systems Integration. Since then, MANPRINT has successfully worked to comprehensively inform Army capability developers and acquisition program managers about the criticality system usability. The re-designation will improve communications, coordination, and technical efforts.
What continued efforts does Army have planned for the future?
HSI will continue its established mission of supporting the system development process. A strong HSI program is a part of the cultural change within the Army centered on how it builds, strengthens, maintains, and assesses individual performance and unit readiness. The Army will focus its HSI efforts to becoming part of a collaborative, Joint HSI community of excellence. This will enable HSI to be universally recognized by its acquisition, industry, and academic partners. One example in which the Army is already participating, is an initiative to develop a DOD military standard (MIL-STD) for how to apply HSI best practices. This is just one of several Joint HSI efforts that must have a united front.
Why is this important to the Army?
Modern systems are characterized by increasing complexity. The increased networking of systems requires more attention to the integration of both the design of systems and the training to operate those systems. Because of their increased functionality, the Army cannot reject these complex systems. Instead, it must learn to manage complexity more effectively mostly through both improved design and systematic training.
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