Revisiting Decision Support Systems for Cognitive Readiness:A Contribution to Unstructured and Complex Scheduling Situations

In this article, the authors focus on scheduling situations. Because of their unstructured nature and hard combinatorial complexity, scheduling situations have always been a predominant application area for decision support systems (DSSes). After setting out the generic characteristics of a DSS, the authors summarize some of their known limitations in scheduling situations. They argue that scheduling situations focus excessively on performance and effectiveness and neglect the potential of human schedulers. The authors then review field studies to understand the way in which humans perform scheduling, demonstrating the importance of cognitive readiness if schedulers are to schedule efficiently. On the basis of design issues and field studies, the authors go on to refine three factors that influence cognitive readiness that therefore need to be taken into account when designing a DSS, namely, adaptability, flexibility, and acceptability. Finally, the authors show how these concepts can be used to assess DSS user interfaces and algorithms from a cognitive readiness perspective

Tasks, hierarchies, and flexibility : planning in food processing industries

An everlasting trade-off in many industries is the one between efficiency and flexibility. In this thesis, we investigate how this trade-off is dealt with in the food processing industries. More specifically, we look at the way in which the flexibility of the production system is related to production planning. The research question of this thesis is: How can day-to-day planning in the Food Processing Industries contribute to flexibility?

Outflanking undecided, ever-changing puzzles:the role of human behavior in scheduling

Scheduling determines the sequence and timing of activities in an organization. This involves, for example, decisions about priorities, timing, staff assignment, and allocating machines to manufacturing operations. These decisions have a considerable impact on performance in many organizations. Scheduling problems are well known for their numerical complexity and are typically approached mathematically. However, several features of scheduling necessitate human involvement. For example, information is ever-changing and needs to be interpreted, and stakeholders often need to be convinced to accept constraint violations. This chapter addresses the interplay between traditional scheduling research and a behavioral operations approach to scheduling, and describes two learning activities that can be played to comprehend some of the social and psychological aspects of the scheduling process