In the era of Industry 4.0 and the introduction of new technologies, collaborative workplaces represent the potential to increase the efficiency of manufacturing systems. The presented research focuses on studying the impact of changing the speed and acceleration of a Cobot to the number of finished products at a collaborative workstation, the average assembly time, and the utilization of the Cobot and worker. In a laboratory experiment, it was demonstrated that changing the parameters of the Cobot significantly affects the optimization parameters of the collaborative workstation productivity. The results indicate an increase in production capacity with an increase in the speed and acceleration of the Cobot, while at the same time highlighting the importance of uniform utilization and occupancy of the Cobot and worker. The findings are particularly interesting from the influence of the Cobot’s audio and video effects on worker, when reducing the average assembly time while increasing the Cobot's capabilities. The results and findings presented open up important new areas of research in the field of social, time and financial justification of collaborative workplaces.

The paper presents the use of simulation modelling methods to evaluate the impact of the collaborative workplaces (human-robot collaboration) importance in correlation to the sustainable manufacturing. Based on an example, numerical simulation results of an existing manual assembly workplace and a newly proposed collaborative workplace are presented using production parameters that describe all three key aspects of sustainable manufacturing: economic, social and environmental aspect. A datadriven simulation model was used, mainly using the input parameters of the real-world production system and numerical assumptions obtained from the literature, with the main objective of detailing the impact on the sustainable orientation of the production process. The results presented in the paper demonstrate the high suitability of simulation modelling methods in the evaluation of existing and newly proposed technologies from the sustainable manufacturing point of view. The results demonstrate that collaborative workplaces, if implemented appropriately and using correct input data, are a possible solution that can cope with limited human resources and ensure high production efficiency.