Abstract
A measurement program was designed to assess benefits derived from the pilot implementation of an office automation system at the Westinghouse Nuclear Fuel Division. The system featured IBM PROFS, graphics software, and computation software hosted on an IBM mainframe computer. Managers, engineers, and secretaries were included in the test group (N = 40) and control group (N = 30) to ensure that each group accurately represented NFD. Measurement tools included an attitude survey and document evaluation logs, which were distributed to the test and control groups before and after the system was installed. In addition, a user evaluation survey was distributed to only the test group after they had had access to the system for five months. Although usage of the system was moderate, benefits were identified for activities associated with document preparation and distribution, message sending, calendar use, and computations. These benefits encouraged management to proceed with full scale implementation of the office automation system.
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