Understanding planning for effective decision support : a cognitive task analysis of nurse scheduling

Planning in organizations is for all times. Coordination of organizational activities is needed not only to improve the overall performance of the organization but also to survive a competitive environment. Changes in the organizational environment, and technological developments (among others) require an adaptive allocation of resources amidst all kinds of uncertainties. Planning has always been an important success factor and is becoming ever more important within the organizations. Whether the objects of planning are machines, goods or personnel, making a plan or making a schedule1 is a strenuous job for the planner. Attaining an optimal’ schedule is becoming more and more difficult since on the one hand, the number of aspects of the problem to be taken into account increases, and on the other hand, the scheduler is restricted in his/her cognitive capabilities. A computerized system that supports the planner in the making of a schedule is seen as a solution to conquer the difficulties of planning. Developments in such systems continue to take shape as the power of information technology increases, making it possible to develop powerful computerized systems in order to support complex problem solving in the organization (Cash, McFarlan & McKenney, 1988; Jelassi, 1987; Keen, 1987; Sol, 1987; Stabell, 1987). Developing decision support for planning tasks is interesting both from a practical and a theoretical point of view. Within the Dutch project DISKUS different planning problems are under consideration. DISKUS is an acronym for Dynamic Interactive Knowledge Utilization Systems. The aim of this project is to research different planning problems to identify common building blocks for decision support. The hypothesis is that a combination of Operation Research and Artificial Intelligence techniques is a fertile ground for the development of more advanced computerized systems (Jorna, 1992; Kornblum, 1992). The project Diskus contains three pilot projects, each of which investigates one specific planning domain (production, network and manpower planning). This thesis is related to the manpower planning project, in particular, nurse scheduling. In this research an investigation into the task performance as seen in this planning domain is performed from a cognitive point of view, and the ZKR nurse scheduling system has also been built on the basis of these results.