The speed-accuracy trade-off in industry

In the class of resource-limited tasks, performance speed and accuracy are expected to be inversely related. However at the systems level, interventions which improve quality can provide benefits in throughput. Examining the speed-accuracy operating characteristic (SAOC) of industrial tasks shows that the apparent conflict between these two bodies of data is due to different types of intervention. A methodology for the systematic consideration of the speed-accuracy trade-off (SATO) is proposed, and its application to the tasks in aircraft structural inspection is developed as an example.