Strategic planning of the collaboration between humans and artificial intelligence in production

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) holds a vast potential for various applications and benefits in production, particularly concerning the collaboration of humans and AI. Their complementary skills can lead to significant advantages. However, the implementation of AI presents technical, organizational, and employee-related challenges that must be addressed from a socio-technical perspective. Concrete actions are necessary, such as defining the roles and responsibilities between humans and AI and selecting appropriate AI applications. Given the extensive scope of potential changes and challenges, a systematic approach is required.Therefore, this paper presents an approach for strategically planning of the collaboration between humans and artificial intelligence in production. The approach is based on an extensive literature review and empirical surveys and includes use cases, design fields, and a procedure model. This model allows companies to assess their current situation in terms of relevant capabilities for human-AI collaboration in manufacturing. Additionally, it identifies any organizational capabilities required for human-AI collaboration that may be lacking for specific use cases, enabling the derivation of necessary measures. Some measures may be similar across different use cases, allowing for the creation of bundles of measures to integrate AI into different work processes. The approach is integrated into a company's strategic planning as a strategic initiative, ensuring alignment with other sub-strategies such as the IT strategy.