The effects of multitasking on quality inspection in advanced manufacturing systems

Although the industrial quality inspection task has been extensively studie d, the effect of multitasking on the performance of the operator in a hybri d inspection system is still unknown. The experiment described in this arti cle compared the quality inspection performance for participants performing a single task, 3 multiple tasks, and 5 multiple tasks. The results of this research indicate that the performance of the operator in the quality insp ection task while multitasking in an advanced manufacturing system will be determined by the interaction between the number of different types of defe cts that can be presented at the same time in the inspected parts and multi tasking. The best performance will be obtained when the load created by add itional tasks minimizes the monotony of the quality inspection task without interfering with the processing resources needed for the memorized quality criteria. (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.