In smart factories, flexible and adaptive work organisation is crucial, for both productivity and work satisfaction. People with different skills, capabilities and preferences should be supported to be engaged, motivated and productive members of the work community. This will bring increased work well-being, fulfilling careers in manufacturing work, improved quality of products, increased productivity as well as stronger global position of industry in Europe through higher social acceptance levels. These impacts will, in turn, improve the competitiveness of the European manufacturing industry and support the principle of responsible manufacturing.
The main objective of Factory2Fit project has been to develop and pilot adaptive human-automation interaction solutions that improve the flow of working, support the worker in understanding and developing his/her competences and engage workers to share knowledge and to participate in designing their own work and training. The solutions developed in Factory2Fit will engage and empower future factory workers and bring increased worker motivation, satisfaction and productivity by giving the worker motivating feedback of his/her wellbeing and work performance, and adapting the work environment according to personal skills and preferences. The solutions will radically increase the possibilities of workers to influence their work and the solutions will engage workers to take responsibility of their own learning and skills development.
Factory2Fit solutions have been evaluated with users in eleven industrial pilots, utilising a common evaluation framework that covers both immediate implications and impacts on work well-being and productivity. The results show that especially the solutions to engage the work community, i.e. participatory design, knowledge sharing and training solutions are very well accepted, provide positive user experience, and have potential to increase both work well-being and productivity. When integrating adaptation solutions to the production environments, legal-ethical issues need to be considered carefully. Factory2Fit has developed ethically sound solutions to measuring and monitoring workers, but still these solutions need to be introduced to workers so that they can participate in designing the local practices of utilising those solutions. Measuring and monitoring should be voluntary to the workers.
