Prioritizing key human factors on effect of human centred assembly performance using the extent analysis method

Today, consumers prefer to have a great variety of products coupled with the intrinsic demand of short lead time, high quality and low costs. Consequently, manufacturing companies require a consistent improvement in flexibility and responsiveness of their production systems in order to accommodate changes of the increasingly competitive market. For human centred assembly as an example, although it offers a good flexibility and responsiveness, human performances are also unpredictable due to their inherent abilities and limitations, psychological traits and physiological states. These issues are often overlooked by many researchers when designing, implementing or evaluating a manufacturing system. This paper presents a study in human factors related to the performance of human centred manual assembly lines and their mutual interactions through a literature review and an industrial survey. Critical performance measures, which are affected by human factors, were evaluated and the most significant human factors were identified using the fuzzy extent analysis method.