Abstract
The concept of resilience is commonly used to represent “an ability to adapt to a changing environment and to survive flexibly despite facing difficulties.” This definition of resilience emphasized its aspects of unpredictable responsiveness to external disturbances as well as self-organized phenomena, which seemed to be close to the definition of complex adaptive systems. This article summarizes the technical challenges to consider the implementation of a concept of resilience into systems from a variety of perspectives. Then, challenges to tackle with the resilience to variabilities in production plans, in work quality, in empirical knowledge, in human-automation systems, and in organizations are presented.
Highlights
Today, the scene of manufacturing in Japan needs increased flexibility to diverse “variabilities,” which are caused by the unexpectedness due to market transformation, overseas expansion of businesses, and changes in the energy and economic environments, and so on
Not by eliminating human beings or limiting their work, but by pursuing system design that allows some human judgment left in the loop, resilience can be established through the fusion of knowledge of human beings and automation
This article summarized the trends in studies on variabilities and resilience, as well as research activities conducted by the author and his colleagues
Summary
The scene of manufacturing in Japan needs increased flexibility to diverse “variabilities,” which are caused by the unexpectedness due to market transformation, overseas expansion of businesses, and changes in the energy and economic environments, and so on. A Canadian ecologist and a former director of IIASA (International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis), proposed to use “resilience” in the field of social science due to that ecological systems had an ability to restore the original state upon environmental changes, which is similar to the homeostasis that living organisms have (Holling [1]) This definition of resilience emphasized its aspects of unpredictable responsiveness to external disturbances as well as self-organized phenomena, which seemed to be close to the definition of complex adaptive systems. The super-smart society is aiming to resolve various social challenges by incorporating the innovations of technologies and the sharing economy into every industry and social life Such innovations will necessitate elaborating the SoS (System of Systems) (Selberg and Austin [3]) approach towards the value co-creation in the whole society integrating several kinds of systems, such as nature, society, biology, and humanity. Challenges to tackle with the resilience to variabilities in production plans, in work quality, in empirical knowledge, in human-automation systems, and in organizations are presented
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
