Innovative methods and tools to facilitate employee involvement and empowerment in production companies
Worker satisfaction, motivation and empowerment have been recognised as critical to healthy and robust organisations. However, these human factors are seen as clashing with more important financial goals like reducing costs and boosting productivity. The EU-funded SO-PC-PRO (Subject-orientation for people-centred production) project set out to introduce solutions for the holistic design and management of workplaces in production companies. To develop a new set of ICT-based technologies that will support people-centred workplaces, the SO-PC-PRO team applied the subject-oriented process management methodology for the first time to modelling processes and interactions in production. This methodology views production companies as complex, socio-technical systems of people, processes and machines that flexibly interact. Project partners developed methods and tools to analyse and improve processes supporting the people-centred design or redesign of workplaces. They devised a bottom-up, fully people-centred workplace improvement methodology that takes into account the work context. Researchers also devised a method and tool that supports seamless process management. This brings production and business practices closer together, thus enabling the flexible interaction of people, processes, sensors and machines. SO-PC-PRO succeeded in developing new human-machine interactions that allow for higher degrees of worker autonomy, and in empowering workers to redesign their own workplaces using intuitive design methods and collaborative tools. The project also seamlessly integrated production and business procedures to enable more adaptable workplaces across an entire organisation.
Keywords
Production companies, SO-PC-PRO, people-centred production, workplaces, subject-oriented process management
