The effect of information level of digital worker guidance systems on assembly performance, user experience and strain

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Worker guidance systems provide product-specific and digital assembly information and can make an important contribution to increasing productivity and quality and relieving employees, especially in flexible variant assembly. However, a critical factor here is the successful design of the systems. While much of the research focuses on aspects of the hardware, this article is dedicated to the question of how the configuration of the level of information, i.e. the amount and depth of information in worker guidance systems, is affected. For this purpose, two studies, a laboratory study at the Technical University of Darmstadt (N = 53) and a field study at a company (N = 30), were conducted and two variants of the information level of a worker guidance system were compared. The study results show that assembly quality in particular is significantly influenced by the level of information; to the advantage of detailed information. No significant differences were found for production times. For the subjective evaluation of the system as well as for the objective and subjectively perceived strain, it can be stated that the high level of information also performs better. The results thus help to design worker guidance systems more precisely so that they fulfill the information needs of the employees as well as possible.