Cognitive analyses for the improvement of service orders in an information technology center: A case of study

Abstract

This case of study takes place at a university’s information technology center where it is possible to damage computers seriously during the initial checking due to procedural or human errors. Thirteen technicians were observed in this work. They perform tasks and subtasks suffering from mental and physical workload that can cause human errors since an average of 300 maintenance orders must be attended weekly. According to the participants, changing the power supply is the task that can cause the most severe damage on computers in case of error, so human error identification and mental workload evaluation techniques were applied using TAFEI and NASA TLX correspondingly. Results found that human errors are mainly due to the poor identification of the equipment waiting to be repaired, while Mental Demand is the highest source for mental workload. Recommendations are given to prevent human errors and reduce mental workload.