Tuesday, June 07, 2005

Performance................

There have been done many studies in human factors and their behaviours in the past. In the early time on 1920s, Henry Ford was influenced by the work of Fredrick Taylor to improve the efficiency of the line workers. Fredrick Taylor had stated his view that ‘Hardly a worker can be found who does not devote his time to studying just how slowly he can work’. This statement made Henry Ford to devote his time to speed up the workers. He stated his view that ‘In simple repetitive tasks like automobile, there was to be no need for skilled labour. Men could learn to do any job quickly, as each job was broken into smaller operations, done by many different men at many different machines.
Since 1927 to 1932, Roethlisberger and Dickson researched on work situations that affect the morale and productive efficiency of shop-workers. They unexpectedly observed that people’s performance reflects the way they are measured. This study is known as the Hawthorne Effect nowadays.
In the mid of 1930, Kurt Lewin developed a dynamic theory of personality. This was based on empirical observation to predict psychological behaviour in which researcher has to consider the whole situation: the momentary structure and the state of the person and the psychological environment. This observation leads to a new way of thinking. Lewin established that the behaviour of the people could be described in terms of the person and environment. This definition can be expressed as follows:
B = f (P, E)
where, B stands for behaviour, E stands for Environment and P stands for the Psychological profile of a person.
In 1930s, Tolman and Lewin formulated the general “expectancy-theory” model of human motivations that provides one way to analysing and predicting which courses of action an individual will follow when he has the opportunity to make personal choices about his/her behaviour. The motivational “force” to engage in behaviour is a multiplicative function of (1) the expectancies the person holds about what outcomes are likely to result from that behaviour and (2) the valence of these outcomes. Recently it has been usefully applied to behaviour in organisational setting (Vroom, 1964; Porter & Lawler, 1968) which can be expressed in symbols as follows:
MF = E x V
where, MF stands for motivational force, E stands for expectancy and V stands for valence.
There has been done other research about people at work which includes of behavioural research and applied psychology. Bonnes and Secchiaroli analysed the literate in environment psychology in which they found that physical factors such a light, noise and temperature can affect performance of an individual. Some of the recent studies also include factors such as air quality and colours.
Lewinian research helps to conceptualise the relationship between people, their environment and their behaviour. The main focus of previous work has been on understanding the interactions between physical, social and economic environment and behaviour.
When designing the human–machine interface, there is a need for system designers, developers, and programmers with knowledge of the production system, operators, work tasks, human limitations, information needs, etc. The dynamic features also require new ways of working, increased confidence on information technology, as well as user-centred support during various work tasks in different development and production phases. Therefore it is needed a closer collaboration, e.g. flexible co-operation and continuous information flow between engineers, operators, development and production departments, suppliers, etc, (Scherer, 1998). As a result, handling of disturbances is no longer the responsibility of the shop floor operators only however it is a complex and combination of problems which involve management, design, maintenance, and operator functions in a company.

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