Managing Production Complexity by Supporting Cognitive Processes in Final Assembly

Abstract: Managing production complexity in final assembly includes understanding and supporting the operators cognitive processes. In this paper three models for information handling and decision-making are combined to better describe intuitive processes in this context. The combination form a conceptual model that was tested using two case scenarios. The scenarios show that by supporting cognitive processes e.g. by simplifying information and presenting it in a better way, production complexity could be better managed, thereby increasing operator performance and satisfaction.