Towards Human-Centric Digital Simulation: Guidelines to Simulate Operators Skills Acquisition and Health in Circular Manufacturing Systems

The ongoing environmental crisis motivates some businesses to shift towards a circular economy. This shift necessitates a comprehensive overhaul of their existing manufacturing processes to enhance their adaptability to circular principles. Amidst substantial uncertainty and a strong need for skilled human labour to handle intricate and variable tasks, operator training emerges as a pivotal element in guaranteeing the efficiency of the production system. Several solutions could be explored to improve operators' skills while integrating a strong social and environmental dimension. In this context, the use of simulation can carry out tests to optimize the acquisition of skills in circular manufacturing systems. However, the current simulation models rarely integrate knowledge from the human and social sciences to model operators in systems while they are crucial to the performance of circular workshops. This paper proposes a methodology to develop a digital simulation taking into account operators' health and skills acquisition in those systems. Copyright (C) 2024 The Authors. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)