User‐centered development of a worker guidance system for a flexible production line

Abstract

Worker guidance systems are digital assistance systems in production, which provide work‐related information and, thus, guide employees through production processes. This article describes the user‐centered development of such a worker guidance system for a flexible production line in a metrology company. Usage context analysis and requirements analysis illustrate the need for a simple and independent system that can be used voluntarily by employees. After two iterations of the human‐centered design process, an interactive software prototype was created and implemented on a tablet personal computer. In this prototype, all essential process and assembly information in the flexible production line is available to the employees in the form of text descriptions and pictures as step‐by‐step instructions, which can be selected via two‐step navigation. The final evaluation was conducted as a user study with N = 10 assembly workers in the flexible production line under realistic conditions and was also intended to find out at which level of detail the information should be displayed in the system. The system scored well on the system usability scale (between 65.8 and 70.8) and concerning acceptance. Using the worker guidance system, no assembly faults occurred during the user study. Due to the significantly shorter assembly time, but no further significant differences, it was decided to set up the less detailed assembly information as a standard in the system. However, employees can call up more detailed information, if necessary. This system will be used by the company in the future.

Investigating the effect of intelligent assistance systems on motivational work characteristics in assembly

“…Assembly work even becomes increasingly complex due to highly variable, individualized manufacturing processes (Egger-Lampl et al, 2019 ; Faccio et al, 2023 ). Various intelligent assistance systems (IAS) have been developed to effectively support assembly workers in their mostly monotonous but concentration-demanding jobs with the intention to reduce cognitive workload, and increase quality (Egger-Lampl et al, 2019 ; Kang et al, 2016 ; Stockinger et al, 2021 ). Although the (cognitive) support of assembly workers by such systems is intended (Berkers et al, 2022 ), the research field lacks specific theories and causal evidence on how IAS shape motivational work characteristics (MWC) (Baethge-Kinsky, 2020 ; Egger-Lampl et al, 2019 ).…”

Wellbeing at Work—Emotional Impact on Workers Using a Worker Guidance System Designed for Positive User Experience

“…Watson et al [59] and Jeske et al [60] explored the content design of information in WGSs and showed that it influences assembly performance, especially in training situations. Stockinger et al [30] also showed that especially the information level and information design affect the assembly performance. The importance of a good user experience of WGSs is regularly emphasized.…”

Flexible production line product research and development and manufacturing cloud platform based on intelligent data collaboration

“…Moreover, the traditional production line is incapable to support data interaction, and can trace historical data in real time according to product production data, or deploy the technical problems and defects of work order execution information, product processing and quality information in the production line. [7][8][9] It is thus a pressing need to develop a method, system and platform for processing the product production data used for flexible production lines.…”