The Application of Collaborative Robots in Garment Factories

Abstract

In response to the development of Industry 4.0 (I4.0), the last few decades witnessed a tremendous increase in innovative applications in the fashion industry. Among all, collaborative robots (Cobots) are a new robot model of I4.0 technology, which can function together with workers without fencing to improve safety and productivity in the manufacturing sectors (Perez et al., 2019). However, the current research's Cobots in garment factories have been limited (Lee et al., 2021). Therefore, this study aimed to understand and predict garment employees' behavioral intention towards the Cobot's implementations. Based on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) (Venkatesh et al., 2003) and the modified UTAUT model of Boer & Astrom (2017), the relationship between performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, trust, anxiety, personal innovativeness, and behavioral intentions associated with Cobots were examined. The proposed model in this study was used to explore the acceptance level of Cobot applications based on employees' perspectives in Vietnamese garment factories. Data were collected via Qualtrics survey from a sample of garment employees working in garment factories in Vietnam. They were recruited to the study using a snowball sampling approach based on the network of the researcher's previous working experience in Vietnam. Out of the 286 participants who were invited to participate in the survey, 275 responded with a response rate of 96.2%. Of which 198 complete responses were deemed usable for further analysis. Two phases of data analysis were conducted: preliminary study and acceptance model testing. First, a preliminary study is a qualitative analysis by labeling each answer's keywords and systematically categorizing based on those keywords to determine the tasks Cobots could do in the garment factory's process. Second, the acceptance model testing consisted of descriptive analysis, principal components analysis, internal reliability assessment using Cronbach's alpha coefficients, correlation analysis, test for normality using Q-Q scatterplots, and simple regression. Those analyses were conducted in SPSS version 28.0. The findings of the study confirmed elements of the original UTAUT model of Venkatesh et al. (2003). Performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions positively affected the garment employees' intention towards the Cobots' implementation. Besides, trust in Cobots, anxiety, and personal innovativeness were inspired by Boer & Astrom (2017) and crucial factors in predicting the garment employees' willingness to collaborate with Cobots in the near future. Trust to Cobots also had a positive impact on the respondents' intention. Personal innovativeness was