The use of measures of entropy in evaluating human supervisory control of a manufacturing system

Many of the concepts underlying human supervisory control pertain to continuous process and control environments. In discrete systems, new questions arise concerning human supervisory control capabilities. The use of measures of entropy is described for evaluating human supervisory control performance in a certain type of discrete system — the flexible manufacturing system. These measures were especially useful in explaining performance when graphic displays intended for enhancing human pattern-recognition capabilities were available and under task conditions with contrasting types of workload.