A new learning curve with fatigue-dependent learning rate

Abstract

Learning and fatigue are consequences of task repetitiveness and have significant effects on an individual's performance. Despite the importance of the problem at hand, only a few studies have formulated their combined effect in a learning curve context. This paper contributes to this line of research, and unlike other models, proposes a learning curve model with a fatigue level-dependent learning rate. The proposed model has been validated using data from an order-picking task and its predictive ability has also been tested against potential models in the literature. The results show that the proposed learning curve outperforms the other models according to efficiency and balance criteria. The sensitivity analysis indicates the effect of the model's parameters on the selected system's measures and provides some managerial insights.