Nomination and commentary on 'Machine interference: a solution of some work-load problems arising when an operative has charge of more than one machine, by Benson F., Miller J. G., & Townsend M. W. H., Journal of the Textile Institute Transactions, 44:12, T619.T644, 1953, and published online on 05 Dec 2008. https://doi.org/10.1080/19447025308662622'

Taking weaving as an illustration, with one loom assigned to each weaver, loom efficiency will be very high because stoppages - principally due to warp and weft breaks - can be attended to immediately. Thus, for any given set of operating conditions there will be several combinations of looms and weavers for producing a given output, requiring more weavers and fewer looms or fewer weavers and more looms. This is the machine interference problem, and it follows that as weaver efficiency increases with the number of looms, loom efficiency declines. [Extracted from the article]