Definition
Term for the differentiated labelling of the collaboration (work process) between human, operating mean and → object of work within the work system. There are different process types for the work system (system related process types), human, operating mean, object of work and information respectively. They indicate the purpose of the individual process section, however they continue by covering the process types “off duty”, “plant out of operation” and “unidentifiable”. Process types are primarily used in operations and their sections, however, in a given context, operations, tasks and activities may be regarded as a concordant designation. In the stricter REFA-related sense this is incorrect insofar as operations and tasks are objective, separately existing categories independent of the person carrying them out.
By contrast, the term activity describes the immediate execution of operations or tasks through active action (activity = operation “in actio”). Activities are tied to the acting person, are influenceable by them and thus only existent and detectable as long as the action lasts. REFA process types are encoded with one or more capital letters (cf. illustration). REFA time types serve as a resource for the temporal differentiation of the process types.
Bettina Dirks
