Assessment of Manufacturing Operational Complexity

The manufacturing system must balance human characteristics, needs, skills and capabilities within the technical and business environment, in order to be effective and successful. A Systems Analysis and Design approach was utilized to integrate manufacturing technologies with the capabilities of human workers, in order to augment the performance of both. A framework was created on which to build systems analysis tools that focus on realistic factors within the manufacturing environment, such as information quantity, diversity and content; complexity (product, process and operational); task effort, and so forth. A matrix methodology and an objective measure of complexity have been developed that assess the three levels of manufacturing complexity: product complexity, process complexity and operational complexity. The focus of this paper is the ‘operational complexity’ and it provides insight into the system performance and sensitivities when considering human characteristics.