Monitoring behavior in manual and automated scheduling systems

Abstract

Human monitoring behavior in manual and automated scheduling systems is examined through an experiment that required the subjects to perform scheduling and monitoring tasks. The task required the assignment of a series of incoming customers to the shortest of three parallel service lines. The subject was either in charge of the customer assignment (Manual Mode) or was monitoring an automated system performing the same task (Automatic Mode). In both cases, the subjects were required to detect the nonoptimal assignments that they or the computer had made. The results showed better error detection performance and lower subjective workload in the automatic mode. The subjects in the manual mode were both biased against declaring their own assignment errors and less sensitive to their misassignments. Results are compared with previous findings of monitoring behavior in manual control systems, and are discussed in terms of human decision making, reliability, workload and system design.