SYSTEM INTEGRATION TASK ANALYSIS PERFORMED AT LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY

Created at the very beginning of the nuclear age, the Materials Control & Accountability (MC&A) system at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) is one of the most mature in longevity in the United States. Over time the LANL system has evolved into a very detailed and well-documented system. However, evolution in an MC&A system is not a guarantee that it is immune to problems. Last year’s survey results identified issues with the LANL MC&A system, in June of last year PNNL teamed with LANL to identify responses to the issues. The most common approach to identifying changes to procedures usually leaps directly from problem to proposed solution with the assumption that the solution will work. However, unless the root cause of a problem is identified first, a common result is the problem remains and procedures proliferate. To ensure the changes would improve the system, the approach that the LANL/PNNL team took was to: 1) Evaluate the entire MC&A system to identify all problems & weaknesses, going beyond the scope of the previous survey, 2) Perform a root cause analysis on each problem or weakness, 3) Identify corrective actions that would address the root cause of each problem. The Process that was followed has been named System Integration Task Analysis (SITA). This paper will explain the facets of the SITA process and how it was applied at LANL. Since one of the anticipated changes was training, Job Task Analysis could have been used. However, Job Task Analysis is a “bottom up” process that concentrates on procedures much like looking at individual trees in a forest. This may explain why many training programs contain gaps in MC&A system or policy coverage or are replete with expensive redundancy because individuals and not the system or policy are the focus of attention.1 System design is a “top down” process that concentrates on the overall system first, much like looking at the forest without regard to what kind of trees are in it.2 Therefore, the team decided to precede with a system design solution as the best approach to correcting deficiencies without making procedures too complex, redundant, or not identifying what procedures and/or training were really needed.