Empirically testing the impact of manufacturing system complexity on performance

As the increase in manufacturing competitiveness forces organizations to us e more sophisticated and complex software, system performance depends on cl ever systems design, efficient planning and scheduling of the related proce sses. For these advanced manufacturing systems the dependence on human comp etence is greater. However, previous studies indicate that the human aspect s for successfully implementing such systems have been neglected The object ive here is to test the hypotheses that system complexity is inversely rela ted to performance, and that training of system operators, and the quality of the man/machine interface reduces the negative impact of system complexi ty. A sample of discreet manufacturing systems from 128 organizations was u sed to test these hypotheses empirically. Moderated multivariate regression indicates that man/machine interfaces are significant contributors to redu cing the negative effect of systems complexity. With a lower level of signi ficance, operator training has a similar impact For complex manufacturing s ystems software, it behoves managers to insure that the man/machine interfa ce provides the desirable features outlined in this study.