ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR)
OPAS: an office procedure automation system
IBM Systems Journal
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Until the mid nineteenth century, labor in the United States and the rest of the world was primarily manual in nature. Productivity improvements were obtained by improving workflow or decreasing wages. After the start of the industrial revolution, a third variable affecting productivity arose. Mechanization (later to be called automation with the introduction of the computer) allowed product output per worker to be greatly increased. Mechanization was applied to those work tasks which were well structured and easily implementable. These areas were primarily the farm and factory manual labor activities which were very expensive in terms of manpower. Production increased sharply and continues to make steady improvement even today.