A method for job design in concurrent engineering

Job design is one of the key elements in the design of production systems. It links other activities, such as machine tool selection, to personnel planning and therefore largely to the characteristics of the required personnel. We present a method that allows a task structure to be generated early, when information is still poorly defined, to be continuously adapted to the increasing level of detail, and to be used to deduce personnel needs. First, requirements for such a method with respect to the necessary modeling elements, scope, and ease of use are derived. Second, a variety of existing methods, ranging from job analysis to object‐oriented modeling tools, is judged with respect to these requirements. Since no existing method fulfills the requirements satisfactorily, a new method was developed. This method is a combination of a modeling method with a job analysis method and is especially suited to deal with poorly defined information. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.