The development of a Human Factors Readiness Level tool for implementing industrial human-robot collaboration

Abstract

The concept of industrial human-robot collaboration (HRC) is becoming increasingly attractive as a means for enhancing manufacturing productivity and product. However, due to traditional preventive health and safety standards, there have been few operational examples of true HRC, so it has not been possible to explore the organisational human factors that need to be considered by manufacturing organisations to realise the benefits of industrial HRC until recently. Charalambous, Fletcher and Webb (2015) made the first attempt to identify the key organisational human factors for the successful implementation of industrial HRC through an industrial exploratory case study. This work enabled (i) development of a theoretical framework of key organisational human factors relevant to industrial HRC and (ii) identification of these factors as enablers or barriers. Although identifying the key organisational human factors (HF) was an important step, it presented a crucial question: when should practitioners involved in HRC design and implementation consider these factors? New industrial processes are typically designed and implemented using a maturity or readiness evaluation system, but these do not incorporate of or link to any formal considerations of HF. The aim of this paper is to expand on the previous findings and link the key human factors in the theoretical framework directly to a recognised industrial maturity readiness level system to develop a new Human Factors Readiness Level (HFRL) tool for system design practitioners to optimise successful implementation of industrial HRC.

Friend or Foe? Understanding Assembly Workers’ Acceptance of Human-robot Collaboration

“…Yet, additional case studies that verify the identified factors in different organizational contexts are necessary. In a follow-up study [ 17 ], the authors developed the so-called human factors readiness level (HFRL) tool, which provides a guideline on how to make use of the identified enablers and barriers in practice. Both studies make clear that for HRC to be successful in practice, it is absolutely necessary to consider human factors throughout the whole implementation process.…”

Human-Machine Interaction and Human Resource Management Perspective for Collaborative Robotics Implementation and Adoption

“…Indeed, continually informing employees would help reduce resistance to change [44]. This includes communication with unions and their inclusion into the process [45].…”

“…This will require greater attention to safety features when choosing the robots and the integration of health and safety management practices [13,46]. Ultimately, the work that addressed managerial implication the most specifically comes from Charalambous and his collaborators [8,45]. They emphasize the importance of employee inclusion and empowerment, top-down communication and active involvement from senior management.…”

On Safe Collaborative Assembly With Large Industrial Robots

“…One measure to quantify this spread is Technological Readiness Level (TRL), which is defined on a scale from one to nine [55]. In this thesis, research activities were directed towards TRL levels of less than six, which refers to demonstration of systems/subsystems in a relevant environment [55,56].…”