Augmented Workforce: contextual, cross-hierarchical enquiries on human-technology integration in industry

Abstract

Although shop floors become more automated, manual labor is more than the sum of recurring tasks which can simply be executed by autonomous machines. Where total automation is ineffective, operator assistance systems (OAS) could increase productivity and empower the workforce. Operator Assistance Systems (OAS) are systems that interact with operators to modify their cognitive or physical capabilities whilst performing industrial tasks. Given the important role of humans in future manufacturing environments that cannot be automated, production organizations in industry and Human-Technology Integration (HTI) researchers need to understand where OAS can be deployed and what human factors and other human implications arise from their deployment. In short, capturing views from stakeholders who are both affected by and affect the successful implementation of new technologies are essential to align technological innovations with a human-centric perspective. However, based on our literature review of OAS, we find that there are few technology-neutral enquiries on the industrial applicability of OAS. In particular, we note a lack of considerations of the different requirements for OAS resulting from diverse stakeholders in industry, which is expected to be of importance when designing effective HTI. To address this gap, we explore the industrial context of OAS and the perspectives of stakeholder groups across organizations on the applicability of OAS using a multi-method research approach encompassing 27 qualitative expert interviews and ethnographic observations of three industrial contexts. A key finding of our contextual enquiry is that participants expect OAS to be beneficial on shop floors if designed to improve cognitive abilities, such as inductive reasoning. Further, in the case a company seeks to introduce an OAS to augment physical capabilities of operators whilst attached to their bodies, the data indicate a cautious approach is sensible as many operators reject such a form of augmentation. We highlight what our findings mean for HTI research, especially as it relates to consideration of the highly contextual user requirements when developing and integrating human-technology systems for industry.