Towards optimal engineering multitasking level through stochastic modelling

Multitasking or task switching has been a topic of interest and research in the field of operations management. There has been a little yet no full proof as to how increasing multitasking levels affect the performance of a whole engineering system. The goal of this paper is to introduce the concept of task switching into a network of engineers which handles and executes the quality complaints of a major aerospace firm and to observe the trends of performance measures such as average lead time, system utilisation and queuing time with increasing multitasking levels. The paper develops a mathematical model based on queuing theory and Jackson networks which is then applied to a discrete events‐based simulation model.