Multitasking: a Review

Multitasking (often referred to as timesharing) has been extensively studied from a mental workload and human performance perspective. However, a relatively small amount of research has been conducted in the manufacturing domain (Wickens, 1992). As the level of system automation increases, the role of the human has shifted from that of a manual controller to system supervisor (Sheridan and Johannsen, 1976). According to Sheridan (1994), “human operators in AMS make their way among machines, inspecting parts, observing displays, and modifying control settings or keying in commands, most of it through computer-mediated control panels adjacent to various machines.” This role of human operators in AMS has been identified as supervisory control in this paper