The human factor in production planning and control: considering human needs in computer aided decision-support systems

The unawareness of production planners about the interaction of key performance indicators (KPIs) in manufacturing systems and misinterpretations of system states often leads to problems when they try to improve them. Exemplary, the lead time syndrome (LTS) represents one of these counterproductive actions. While planners aim to improve due date reliability by planned lead time adjustments, the result is often an aggravation of due date reliability. This is due to human behaviour in the decision-making process, which can be biased. Despite its potential to improve the logistic performance, human needs were out of scope of recent investigations in the field of logistics. The aim of this paper is to close this research gap by means of a case study and research on human behaviour in the field of psychology. The result is the determination of guidelines to improve the logistic performance in future decision-support systems by considering human needs.