Availability in Human order picking systems: an empirical study on worker’s performance profile

The precise estimation of the performance of an order picking system can hugely resent from its availability; availability resents from the presence of behavioral aspects that are difficult to predict, such as the variability of human efficiency due to the influence of individual productivity profiles. These subjective factors are closely related to worker behavior, and, for this reason, they are difficult to express with mathematical functions that can generalize their overall effect on performance deviance in manufacturing systems. Based on a manual order picking system case study, this research proposes an empirical analysis of the work performance during a single work shift. This work considers the discretionary management of picker microbreaks as a source of deviation from work schedules for clustering different performance profiles based on picker productivity data. A deductive approach based on availability analysis was carried out to outline individual productivity profiles capable of incorporating all performance-relevant input factors to determine the attitude of different groups of workers to behave and work similarly.