Operation Research course

MODELS OF HUMAN COGNITION AND DESIGN PRINCIPLES Models of human cognition that have been extensively used in ergonomics to develop guidelines and design principles fall into two broad categories. Models in the first category have been based on the classical paradigm of experimental psychology—also called the behavioral approach—focusing mainly on information-processing stages. Behavioral models view humans as ‘‘fallible machines’’ and try to determine the limitations of human cognition in a neutral fashion independent from the context of performance, the goals and intentions of the users, and the background or history of previous actions. On the other hand, more recent models of human cognition have been developed mainly through field studies and the analysis of real-world situations. Quite a few of these cognitive models have been inspired by Gibson’s (1979) work on ecological psychology, emphasizing the role of a person’s intentions, goals, and history as central determinants of huma...

DIAGNOSIS, DECISION MAKING AND ERGONOMICS After this brief review of behavioral and cognitive models, we can now focus on two complex cognitive processes: diagnosis and decision making. These cognitive processes are brought into play in many problem-solving situations where task goals may be insufficiently specified and responses may not benefit from past knowledge. These characteristics are common to many problem-solving scenarios and affect how people shift to different modes of cognitive control. Problem solvers may use experiences from similar cases in the past, apply generic rules related to a whole category of problems, or try alternative courses of actions and assess their results. In other words, optimizing problem solving on the basis of knowledge-based behavior may be time consuming and laborious. People tend to use several heuristics to regulate their performance between rule-based and knowledge- based processing. This increases task speed but may result in errors that are d...

INTRODUCTION In any purposeful human activity there is a blend of physical components or manipulations and cognitive components, such as information processing, situation assessment, decision making, and planning. In many tasks, however, the cognitive components are more demanding and crucial for the task performance than the physical components. We call these tasks cognitive . Design, managerial and production planning, computer programming, medical diagnosis, process control, air traffic con- trol, and fault diagnosis in technological systems are typical examples of cognitive tasks. Traditionally, cognitive tasks have been carried out by white-collar workers, middle and upper cadres of enterprises, as well as several freelance professionals. With the advent of information technology and automation in modern industrial settings, however, the role of blue-collar workers has changed from manual controllers to supervisors and diagnosticians. In other words, developments in techn...

COMBINING THE FORMAL AND INFORMAL ORGANIZATIONS: THE CHALLENGE OF ALIGNMENT IN A FAST-CHANGING WORLD Organizations can hardly be called organized if people throughout them are pursuing goals that are random, unaligned, and conflicting. Managing performance, then, must include an effort to align goals, both against performance challenges and across the various parts of the organization (and increasingly, effort beyond the organization itself, e.g., by strategic partners). Until a decade ago, alignment was considered a simple task, one conducted mostly at budgeting and planning time to be certain all the numbers added up. Today, alignment is far more subtle and challenging. To meet that challenge, readers must be certain they are paying attention to only the relevant challenges, the relevant metrics, and the relevant parts of both the formal and the informal organization. The formal organization equates to formal hierarchy. It reflects the official directions, activities, and behavior t...

PERFORMANCE SUCCESS: GOAL SETTING AND METRICS Let’s first look at a few fundamental flaws in how many organizations approach performance. As stressed by Smith (1999), ‘‘Performance begins with focusing on outcomes instead of activities.’’ Yet most people in most organizations do the reverse. With the exception of financial results, most goals are activity based instead of outcome based. Such goals read like ‘‘develop plans to reduce errors’’ or ‘‘research what customers want.’’ These are activities, not outcomes. They do not let the people involved know when they have succeeded, or even how their efforts matter to their own success and that of their organizations. P erformance Fundamentals and Obstacles A variety of obstacles and bad habits explain this misplaced emphasis on activities instead of out- comes. At their root lie the old assumptions, financial-focus, internal orientation, and silo organization models we reviewed above. These obstacles and bad habits include: Natural H...

THE CHANGE IMPERATIVE After summarizing the fundamental forces of change that so often determine the nature of today’s performance challenges, this section reviews a series of key concepts and ideas useful in managing performance itself. These include: • The balanced scorecard: a change in what performance means and how its is measured • New mental assumptions for managing performance and change • Disciplines of learning and performing organizations • Work as process and competition as time based • Characteristics of high performance organizations • The trend toward impermanent organizations and alliances Forces of Change If you are young enough, the world of change is all you have. For others, managing performance is very different today than in years past. Regardless of your age and experience, you should have a picture of the fundamental forces at work that shape and determine the challenges ahead of yourselves and your organizations. One of our favorite framework...