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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Factory2Fit (Empowering and participatory adaptation of factory automation to fit for workers)

Teaser

Summary

Smart factories are characterised by increasing automation and increasing customisation. In these dynamic environments flexible and adaptive work organisation is crucial, both for productivity and work satisfaction. It is important that people with different skills, capabilities and preferences can be engaged, motivated and productive members of the work community in manufacturing industries. This will bring increased work well-being, fulfilling careers in manufacturing work, improved quality of products, increased productivity as well as stronger global position of industry in Europe through higher social acceptance levels. These impacts will, in turn, improve the competitiveness of the European manufacturing industry and support the principle of responsible manufacturing.

The main objective of Factory2Fit project is to develop and pilot adaptive human-automation interaction solutions that improve the flow of working, support the worker in understanding and developing his/her competences and engage workers to share knowledge and to participate in designing their own work and training. The solutions to be developed in Factory2Fit will engage and empower future factory workers and bring increased worker motivation, satisfaction and productivity by giving the worker motivating feedback of his/her wellbeing and work performance, and adapting the work environment according to personal skills and preferences. The solutions will radically increase the possibilities of workers to influence their work and the solutions will engage workers to take responsibility of their own learning and skills development.

Work performed

During the first 18 months, the project has proceeded according to the plans. Based on a thorough analysis of industrial requirements and enabling technologies, the consortium has defined a common vison and related scenarios and use cases. The vision includes two kinds of adaptation solutions: 1) Empowering the worker solutions adapt the work environment according to the worker model and give motivating feedback to the worker; 2) Engaging the work community solutions encourage and motivate workers to participate and influence at the work place as well as to develop their competences. A common architecture for the development work has been defined, and the required concepts, modules and their interaction have been designed. A dynamic user model, together with online and offline measures, has been defined. Implementation of the adaptation solutions has started well and demonstrations of key modules have been implemented. A Virtual Factory environment has been set up to support the development of participatory design and training solutions. First demonstrations of participatory design, training and knowledge sharing solutions have been implemented and they have been evaluated with factory workers. The consortium has defined the Factory2Fit integration system to support the planning and implementation of the industrial pilots. Piloting has already started with the Worker Feedback Dashboard pilot. The project has defined a design and evaluation framework to support designing solutions that will have a positive impact on work well-being. The project has delivered a wide set of dissemination activities, targeting general public, industry, policy makers and the scientific community. The project has also set up a networking cluster with other FoF-4 projects and issued a joint press release.

Final results

Factory2Fit has defined a vision of future factories where the workers are empowered and engaged to influence and develop their work. The vision is in line with that of the three industrial pilot partners. The vision is also supported by a wide set of foreseen solutions and industrial use cases. This kind of broader view of future factories is beyond the state of art, where the research focus is often on individual solutions, and the connections to actual industrial needs may be loose. Development work towards the Factory2Fit vision has started and the technical work has many advancements beyond the state of the art: 1) Factory2Fit has developed a universal approach to factory adaptation with a systematic way of defining the necessary levels of automation. 2) The Factory2Fit Dynamic Worker Model supports this universal approach, where new machine, task and worker related information can be easily added. 3) The Task Distribution Engine takes into account dynamic worker, task and machine capabilities as well as worker preferences. 4) Factory2Fit has introduced an implementation of the quantified worker idea on the factory floor. The Worker Feedback Dashboard gives the workers insight to their work well-being and performance. 5) Factory2Fit has introduced a Virtual Factory model to support training and participatory design. 6) Factory2Fit has developed an online training system where the workers can do image-based searches in a video library. 7) Contextual knowledge sharing is supported with gamification and Augmented Reality based interaction tools. The project has defined a common framework to support consistent design and evaluation activities, for positive impacts on work well-being. This is also beyond state of the art where the focus is often on limited perspectives.

The project has defined a common architecture and a technical framework for the forthcoming industrial pilots. These will support integrating the developed modules to support different industrial pilots. The first industrial pilot, to study the Worker Feedback Dashboard in long-term use, has already started. Factory2Fit will continue to implement and integrate the individual modules, and refine them for the industrial pilots. The project aims to focus on a wide set of industrial pilots during the latter half of the project. This supports studying user acceptance, user experience and impacts of the solutions.

Empowering the worker concepts have the potential to contribute to work well-being, and the balance between personal and professional life. When work is improved to take into account the various skills and expertise of people, productivity can be increased. Monitoring workers is, however, a new and complex phenomenon with several legal, ethical and company policy considerations. An engaged work community is flexible and prepared for changes. The workers feel responsible, not only for their daily performance, but also for the future of the company. When people can influence their work, they will experience their work as more meaningful.

The project is proceeding well towards the industrial impacts expected in the project plan: increased adaptation, work satisfaction and increased quality. When factory management gets an insight into the link between worker well-being and factory performance, this can have many positive impacts, and will boost the adoption of the solutions. A negative impact could be that Factory2Fitâ€™s solutions could eventually be used for performance management. To prevent this, the whole data life cycle should be designed carefully.

On a societal level, Factory2Fitâ€™s solutions can be seen as one step towards a data-intensive and quantified society. Factory2Fit solutions could support the aim of sustainable and responsible industry by compensating the physical and cognitive capacity of the worker during his/her whole work career. The benefits of adaptation should be promoted in order to encourage wide adoption in the manufactur