Experiential learning and forgetting for manual and cognitive tasks

Workers in the manufacturing environment must constantly learn new skills, technology, and processes in order to keep up with the move toward shorter product cycle times and production runs. Consequently, worker learning and retention is becoming an increasingly important factor in manufacturing productivity. With the enormous increase in the volume and quality of low level data that are collected from bar code readers and automated acquisition devices, we have the opportunity to obtain detailed empirical knowledge about the learning and forgetting process. A population based approach to measuring workforce learning and retention forgetting is described through empirical industrial examples that include a manual task and a procedural task. Results provide management with the means for effective worker allocation. We present several empirical results including the result that workers who learn more rapidly also tend to forget more rapidly for both the manual and the procedural tasks. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.