Often technology is introduced into manufacturing and process control environments to partially automate tasks too complex to fully automate. However, it is not always clear how to measure the benefits of such projects. More often than not, automation eliminates but also shifts human work, and broad productivity measures can fail to capture such changes. To this end, this effort describes a manufacturing case study that looks at human-machine allocation metrics involving a laboratory fermentation unit upgrade. Using a workflow monitoring and function allocation analytic approach, it was determined that upgrading an older microbial culture bioreactor (fermentor) to a new design with intelligent monitoring capabilities resulted in an approximate 17% reduction in dedicated human supervision. This workload reduction allowed scientists to spend less time on repetitive tasks and more time concentrating on other, more open-ended problems that require more expertize. However, the new technology increased human efforts across other functions, suggesting potential mitigation paths for future technology development. This effort illustrates that the impact of new technology on human-machine tasking can be quantified through a function allocation analysis and also provide diagnostic information, both of which are critical in understanding any overall added benefit of intelligent systems.

中文翻译：

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通过人机功能分配分析衡量过程控制自动化的好处

通常将技术引入制造和过程控制环境，以部分自动化过于复杂而无法完全自动化的任务。然而，如何衡量此类项目的收益并不总是很清楚。通常情况下，自动化消除但也改变了人类的工作，而广泛的生产力衡量标准可能无法捕捉到这种变化。为此，这项工作描述了一个制造案例研究，该研究着眼于涉及实验室发酵单元升级的人机分配指标。使用工作流程监控和功能分配分析方法，确定将旧的微生物培养生物反应器（发酵罐）升级为具有智能监控功能的新设计，可将专门的人工监督减少约 17%。这种工作量的减少使科学家们可以花更少的时间在重复性任务上，而将更多的时间集中在需要更多专业知识的其他更开放的问题上。然而，新技术增加了其他职能部门的人力投入，为未来技术发展提出了潜在的缓解途径。这项工作表明，新技术对人机任务的影响可以通过功能分配分析进行量化，还可以提供诊断信息，这两者对于理解智能系统的任何整体附加好处都至关重要。