Manufacturing System Design That Enhance By Taking Account Of Distributed Cognition:

Human behaviour and capabilities are key elements in an organisation in which an individual or group work. Performance of an individual worker makes a vital contribution to the overall effectiveness of the system however the productivity of an individual worker is affected both by his/her surrounding working environments. Particularly there is a weakness when we consider the human part in manufacturing system design such as the 'direct' workers who are devoted to mainly manual routines such as product assembly. Most of the worker behaviour is influenced by various aspects of the surrounding environment: physical factors (Noise level, Air- temperature, Light level, Humidity, Vantilasation), organisational factors (Shift Patterns, Work terms, Maintenance, Training, Hierarchical structure, Diversity, Job rotation, Communication, Organisational Culture) and more perceptive, by individual/sociocultural factors (General intelligence, Skills factor, work-related attitudes, Extroversion, beliefs, values, IQ, Work ethic, Job satisfaction, Goals, Neuroticism, Locus of control, Openness, Organisational, Age, Commitment, Gender, Job satisfaction) within the system and factors relating to him/her, such as personality, physiology and so on at the same time. Certainly, these people oriented issues will have an effect on the performance of a manufacturing system and if we do not considered and resolved at the strategic design stage they may be difficult and expensive to correct once a factory is operational.
Human performance is moving towards the concept of “human behaviour”. Human behaviour is defined as “consistent lines of activity” (Becker, 1960). A successful manufacturing organisation is always involved with the design and re-designs. The exact form of the stages in such a process may be different between organisations. There is always a point arise when evaluation takes place to see whether a proposed system design is likely to fulfil expectations or not. In this system, a single design engineer/system design is responsible for the manufacturing system. Changing the role of an engineer from a manual controller to a supervisory controller is a great change in the current manufacturing system and it requires human factors research in future as well. In order to ensure human performance and to integrate new technologies necessary for this future manufacturing system design environment, it is understood that human factors must be involved from the beginning and throughout the development of new technologies, policies and procedures (Braune, Jahns, and Bittner, 1996).
Siebeneicher (1987) stated his view that technology alone will not improve a company’s efficiency; it starts with management and people. Education and training are vital to successful implementation of advanced manufacturing technologies. Mize (1987) noted that management must recognise the critical nature of proper training and education. Technology is advancing very rapidly in the manufacturing field that continuing education and training become very necessary in this field. Chang (1989) stated that an organisation can never realise such a change by simply hiring engineers and technicians with new technical expertise from outside. A long-term educational and training program should be designed and implemented to train the employees so that restructuring of the human resource for jobs requiring advanced technical expertise can be made possible. Good education and training programs enable employees to have confidence in performing the new jobs and bring them job satisfaction. It is understood that human factors must be involved from the beginning and throughout the development of new technologies, policies and procedures (Braune, Jahns, and Bittner, 1996).