Exploring of the consequences of human resources multitasking in industrial automation projects: a tool to mitigate impacts

摘要

Each industrial automation project includes tasks strongly depend on human factor many of which may belong to the critical path or chain of the project. Multitasking affects significantly human productivity. This reduction in productivity has as a direct result the delay of the primary task which may cause an overall delay to the project with cost and time overruns. A project should be seen in a global environment that of the company, where resources are shared among its portfolio of projects. Although multitasking might have negative results, it is something that cannot be eliminated, but it can be mitigated by project managers. This work presents the effects of multitasking in human productivity, especially when the tasks are complex, like PLC/SCADA software development. Using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method, a simple tool is created to be used by project managers, in order to assist them in decision making. Criteria that influence these decisions are referenced and their priority vectors are proposed. Also, some real examples are given. A project manager faces a complex situation when they asked to decide allocation of resources and priorities among different projects. Parameters that are difficult to predict in real situations may have a significant role in the decision making process. There are a lot of published works based on AHP applications in different fields, but there is a gap in the field of industrial automation projects and the related project manager's decision making. This study focuses on these decision making process which determines which tasks should be paused or not for a better allocation of resources, taking into account the global environment of a technical company. The tool can be implemented with changing criteria and priority vectors to adapt to different type of projects. Future research could identify additional criteria and sub-criteria with different priority vectors, depending on different project specifications.