INFLUENCE OF TASK COMPLEXITY ON LEARNING TIMES OF SENSORIMOTOR TASKS IN ASSEMBLY SYSTEMS

摘要

When production systems are launched or restructured, employees are often assigned to assembly tasks that are unfamiliar to them. Thus they have to get acknowledged to their new tasks and have to train them before reaching a reference performance, which is usually defined by means of a target time. The period necessary for this purpose is defined as learning time. Since its duration cannot be reliably forecasted by known methods there are large scheduling uncertainties in those production systems, which lead to a low adherence to delivery dates for customers. To prevent this, a method for forecasting learning time is under development. In this context an empirical study focusing on the task complexities' influence on learning time has been conducted. Therefore, three tasks of different complexity have been executed repeatedly by apprentices in industrial mechanics. The contribution includes a description of the forecasting method as well as detailed presentation and interpretation of the test series and a comprehensive discussion of the results.