A systems view of personnel assignment problems

Personnel assignment problems have traditionally been solved using operations research (OR) methods. The purpose of the research was to demonstrate the value of taking a systems view of personnel assignment beyond the usual OR models. Human factors methodologies and research methods were used to describe and analyze the components of the personnel assignment process at a printing company. These included macroergonomics, human-computer interaction, the skills-rules-knowledge (SRK) framework, hierarchical task analysis, decision ladders, and abstraction decomposition spaces. This approach facilitated assessments for function allocation and work system design, which are argued to be necessary for successful implementations of any solution for personnel assignment problems.