measuring time..

[roka001]

Hi!

I've been looking all over the internet for a software that measures the time when the mouse and/or keyboard is in use and then creates a report. on a daily/week/month -base.
It would be cool if the software could log the time starting to use and when gone idle.

The reason for this is that I got a number of computer stations that employees are using for diffrent tasks. I have gotten complains about that the stations are to few. In my assesment they are just enough. Main problem is that everyone just wants to use the stations at the same time.


Any tips and ideas?

 

[Andrew Fergus]

Hi

You are quite correct in seeking quantitative data. But rather than measuring use of the human interface devices on the terminals, how about measuring the time the seats are occupied? If a person is reading something on the screen for an extended period, this time won't get captured in any user interface device analysis, but it may be valid use of the terminal nonetheless. Unfortunately, this will have to be done the old fashioned way (think person, pen and paper).

In conjunction with measuring the amount of time the seats are occupied, you should also consider measuring the activities conducted on the terminals. If the terminals are not being used for their intended purpose then there is a potential issue / solution. I'm aware there are server-side applications that can monitor desktop activity, but I'm not 100% familiar with them, nor if they are applicable to your situation.

Lastly, if you measure the peak periods, exactly how many people are missing out? Only a hospital needs to be resourced to 100% demand with the resultant redundancy. However, (almost) every other industry can cope with meeting demand x% of the time. Pick a number that can be managed. It also comes back to managing the expectations of the users and looking at scheduling - if there are massive amounts of downtime then this is a scheduling problem, not a resourcing problem.

HTH, Andrew

 

[roka001]

You are correct that measuring the time seated is the most effective way of measuring the usage of a computer. However... the usage of pen and paper has proven not to be as reliable as an autimatic measurment. If a person forgets to fil out the start and stop time it would mess things up. And the administration of typing it in to a databas... wooow... would not want to be that dude who has to do that. No.
Even thou that you might lose some "time" when the user is reading someting it would still be more effective. The report would look funny with the starts and stops all the time. But it would be easy to build a macro to compensate for that.

I'm comfident that its a scheduling problem. I just need facs to tell the junior supervisors that they need to plan their peopels time better.

I have looked for monitor software and found about 4-5 of then that holds the a piece of the functionallity I want. Starting to lose hope in finding one.

Anyone know a good way of building your own software that reminds of VBA coding? =)



Thanx!!

 

[Andrew Fergus]

Hi

When I mentioned the part of 'pen and paper' this was to be done by an observer, not the user. the main reason is becuase observer can also measure the queue - the queue of people will not be measured by any automated routine. I agree it will be a boring job (both capturing the data and recording it), but that's what operations research is all about! The fun part is analysing it.

Cheers
Andrew