APPLICATION OF MULTIVARIATE DISCRIMINANT ANALYSIS FOR CLASSIFYING PROFICIENCY OF EQUIPMENT OPERATORS

Using data gathered from expert opinion of plant and equipment professionals; this paper presents the key variables that may constitute a maintenance proficient plant operator. The Multivariate Discriminant Analysis (MDA) was applied to generate data and was tested for sensitivity analysis. Results showed that the MDA model was able to classify plant operators' proficiency at 94.10 percent accuracy and determined nine (9) key variables of a maintenance proficient plant operator. The key variables included: i) number of years of experience as equipment operator (PQ1); ii) eye-hand coordination (PQ9); iii) eye-hand-foot coordination (PQ10); iv) planning skills (TE16); v) pay/wage (MQ1); vi) work satisfaction (MQ4); vii) operator responsibilities as defined by management (MF1); viii) clear management policies (MF4); and ix) management pay scheme (MF5). The classification procedure of nine variables formed the general model with the equation viz: OMP (general) = 0.516PQ1 + 0.309PQ9 + 0.557PQ10 + 0.831TE16 + 0.8MQ1 + 0.0216MQ4 + 0.136MF1 + 0.28MF4 + 0.332MF5 - 4.387