A human-centred workstation in industry 4.0 for balancing the industrial productivity and human well-being

Abstract

Cyber-physical productions systems (CPPS) play a fundamental role in the fourth industrial revolution along with human centred design. The consideration of these two factors leads to the concept of human centred cyber-physical production systems (H-CPPSs), which are defined as systems that support humans, machines, and software to integrate virtual and physical worlds. H-CPPS are not intended to substitute for human operators but rather to support and augment their capabilities and ensure their well-being. Limited information currently exists about workstation design from an ergonomic perspective and a proper method for including a workstation in a H-CPPS. This paper proposes a methodology that allows identification of industrial requirements and ergonomic considerations for establishing guidelines to integrate Industry 4.0 principles in the manufacturing shopfloor of large and small-medium enterprises by designing a workstation framework that balances operator well-being and manufacturing productivity. First, this approach evaluates a set of general production tasks from the manufacturing industry, assesses the ergonomic risks during execution and identifies the technological enablers to balance human productivity and well-being. Second, this approach provides a set of guidelines for deploying a generic human centred workstation with ergonomic considerations. Finally, this paper describes a case study in which a human-centred workstation was constructed as a proof of concept of the proposed methodology. Experimental tests were applied to find significant statistical improvements between controlled and experimental scenario. The experimental results determined from the methodological constructed workstation with human-centred considerations contributes to reduce the ergonomic risk on industrial operators without affecting its productivity.