The performance of direct workers has a significant impact on the competitiveness of many manufacturing systems. Unfortunately, system designers are ill equipped to assess this impact during the design process. An opportunity exists to assist designers by expanding the capabilities of popular simulation modelling tools, and using them as a vehicle to better consider human factors during the process of system design manufacture. To support this requirement, this paper reports on an extensive review of literature that develops a theoretical framework, which summarizes the principal factors and relationships that such a modelling tool should incorporate.

For a long time, manufacturing system production tasks have been automated and divided to reduce variability between workers and improve efficiency. People's individual differences are now barely considered in the design and organisation of systems because they are not seen to be of importance to operations. Evidence now suggests that this neglect could be erroneous and detrimental to current manufacturing efficiency. This paper presents current research that intends to address this problem by investigating human variability in modern, highly-automated production systems.

In einzelnen Fällen repräsentiert der Zungenkropf das zur Zeit alleinige funktionell tätige Schilddrüsengewebe.