Function allocation between humans and systems in self-optimizing production networks

In order to stay competitive in today's global markets, new forms of production systems are needed to react flexibly to changing market conditions and to meet the customers' demand for variety. Therefore, within the Cluster of Excellence "Integrative Production Technology for High-Wage Countries" self-optimizing production systems are developed that are able to adapt autonomously to changing product structures and production processes. These self-optimizing systems range from single machines over manufacturing respective assembly cells, up to the factory level within a socio-technical production network. Despite the high level of automation, the human is still an integral part of the system but there is a change in function allocation between humans and systems. Therefore, this paper describes the changing role of the human operator due to self-optimizing systems exemplarily for three processes from the fields of logistics and production planning, assembly and manufacturing. Based on expert analyses the work processes were assessed and modelled in case of self-optimization as well as for the conventional systems. The results showed that independent of the degree of automation self-optimizing systems provoke a shift of the role of the human from mainly sensorimotor tasks to predominantly supervisory control, as the human is only responsible for final decisions or even only has to intervene in case of malfunction. Ergonomic challenges and approaches for a user-oriented automation are exposed in this paper. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.