Designing usable decision support systems for HVM

In high volume manufacturing (HVM), system control is shared between automation and human workers. The social organisation of workers plays an important role in supporting human decisions. Advances in the application of automation to a system, may change the social organisation associated with its operation. It establishes new work roles with broader information demands that require advanced decision support systems (DSS). Visualisation tools have been shown to improve decision-making in many situations. While guidelines exist for the visual representation of quantitative data, no methodology exists for displaying complex information structures. We apply cognitive work analysis (CWA) to a semiconductor HVM plant to derive a model of its information structures. This is a first step towards the creation of an interactive visual DSS. A number of modifications to CWA techniques are made to accommodate the complexity of HVM