The purpose of the paper is to emphasize the fact that operator performance is one of the most important components of economic performance of a machine system. A manager must consider the type, amount and value of required operator labour when planning for mechanized agricultural production. In the paper are presented the changes appeared in our days in operator labour at modern tractors or other agricultural machines: automatic machine control, the global positioning system and others. The methods used for obtaining the diagrams are those of direct measurement made on tractors and agricultural machines. The degree of originality of the paper consists in the fact that few researches studied the importance of human operator in the performance of a machine.

operator performance; automatic control; global positioning system

Presentation: oral