Digital Work in Smart Production Systems

Abstract

On the one hand, Industry 4.0 provides possibilities to address arising challenges such as globalisation, individualisation and shortening product lifecycles. On the other hand, it also increases changes and challenges in planning and operation processes of production systems.

The paper discusses the changes in digital work in the areas of planning, operating and improving smart production systems. Current research approaches show that especially in planning processes and supportive tasks a high dynamic is evident, but also the work on the shop floor is changing. Automation technology and intelligent algorithms as a base for production planning and control up to factory-as-a-service concepts reduce operational room for manual actions, but require new digital planning, implementation and maintenance tasks. Furthermore, technologies like cobots enable new forms of flexible coexistence between human and machine in production systems. Due to the increasing complexity of products and production systems, conventional improvement approaches from the fields of Lean Management and Six Sigma are reaching their limits, as the analyses are often limited to simple relationships and correlations. Data science in the industrial environment enables new opportunities to analyse large volumes of data to identify multivariate patterns and correlations. All of this leads to new requirements for competences, roles and work organisation.