Human and Cobot Cooperation Ethics: The Process Management Concept of the Production Workplace

Abstract

The competitiveness of modern companies depends today on the ability to implement digitised technologies into production processes in human-friendly ways. The aim of this paper is to analyse ethical aspects of human-cobot cooperation in industrial production and to design a process standard aimed at ensuring an ethically stable cooperative workplace. The scientific contribution of this study lies in the identification and definition of standardized parameters of the ethics of the production process in the workplace. Based on the analysis of cooperative workplaces in 250 industrial companies, a code of ethics has been defined, i.e. a process standard that determines the navigation of the design by selected optimization criteria necessary for setting up a hybrid workplace defined as human and cobot (collaborative robot) with the support of digitised technologies. In the presented results and the final discussion attention is devoted to the need to radically change the philosophy of workplace standardization in the sense of equal access to workload settings by humans and robots. In the process of standardization, it is necessary to consider the difference in the standardization of human jobs and cobot jobs: the thinking process. In modern industrial companies the need has arisen to create working standards that take into account the adaptive ability of cobots and adapt the cobots’ workflow to human needs concerning performance and productivity. The presented results include recommendations for industrial companies to develop an ethical and stable production workplace based on an adequately defined form of cooperation.

The Relationships of Human-Cobot Interaction Fluency with Job Performance and Job Satisfaction among Cobot Operators—The Moderating Role of Workload

“…The other activities may include citizenship behavior, e.g., helping others or shaping the work context, and creative performance. With regard to task performance, the study results are consistent with previous investigations that showed positive associations between fluency in HRI and individual performance [ 31 , 40 , 79 ] as well as with the general notion of academics and practitioners that deploying cobots in production systems is majorly beneficial for the efficiency of employees [ 1 , 7 , 21 ] and the productivity of the system [ 2 ], provided that the interaction is designed not to neglect the importance of human factors [ 24 , 25 ] such as cognitions and emotions [ 13 ]. As for organizational citizenship behavior and creative performance, to the author’s best knowledge, this is the first study that verified the relationships between these facets of employee behavior and fluency in HRI.…”

“…Collaborative robots change the working system’s dynamics and increase efficiency [ 2 ]. However, bringing a robotic agent into the loop requires a new comprehension of human-robot team effectiveness and fluency as dependent on three sources [ 35 ].…”

“…Contemporary manufacturing industry is subject to an evolution in which the interaction between humans and technology is fundamental. The emergence of advanced human-robot interaction (HRI) has modified the performance of tasks [ 1 ] to boost system productivity and efficiency [ 2 ]. Importantly, because workers play a strategic role in manufacturing activities [ 3 ], their abilities and skills are enhanced rather than replaced by robotic technology [ 4 , 5 ] in human-centric automation [ 6 ].…”

Task Complexity and the Skills Dilemma in the Programming and Control of Collaborative Robots for Manufacturing

“…Furthermore, task complexity can be reduced by sharing the task among multiple cobots [37] or by task reduction, cooperatively solved by multiple robots [38]. For instance, some researchers have explored different ways of coordinating multiple cobots' movements and actions [39], while others have focused on developing new algorithms to improve communication and cooperation among cobots [40]. This paper focuses on the complexity of the task overall to be undertaken by a cobot or cobots with respect to the programming effort required.…”

Towards Integration of Business Process Management and Knowledge Management. IT Systems’ Perspective

“…• to deal with a wider range of problems beyond the scope of individual employees, • to use various experiences, skills, predispositions, and knowledge, • to solve problems characterised by complexity and a wider range of impact, usually concerning many organisational structures at the same time, • to positively impact the motivation and satisfaction of employees, • to easier implement recommendations resulting from the team's work compared to the implementation of individual ideas (Detyna, Detyna & Dudek-Kajewska, 2016;Bilas & Adeeb, 2017;Detyna, 2018;Chromjakova, Trentesaux & Kwarteng, 2021;Kir & Erdogan, 2021;Marín-González & Pérez-González, 2021;Tubis & Werbińska-Wojciechowska, 2021).…”