Stemming from a user-centered design approach, this service focuses on how technologies shape the human-machine interaction in the factory, and how to re-design the HMIs and production lines to improve efficiency whilst reducing costs.

Consulting related to Business Consultancy in the context of Manufacturing

Scope

The introduction of innovative technologies and automation in manufacturing requires defining the new tasks assigned to the operators, and thus the new experience of the workforce, making emerge and anticipate possible strengths and weaknesses of the new solutions (e.g., this is true when designing digital interactions via multi-sensory HMIs and the physical ergonomy of the shop floors and production lines).

Approach

This consultancy service could focus on one or more of the following areas of investigation:

1. Individual/collaborative interaction (humans as single users or humans collaborating with machines). This aspect refers to new forms of human enhancement and augmented capabilities to reduce mental workload and physical ergonomics. Deep Blue can support the monitoring of the neuro-physiological status of the operators/technicians allowing them to design personalised experiences and adapt the interaction according to the users’ skills, abilities, roles, and tasks, in order to guarantee the right level of workload to achieve better performance.

2. Multi-user interactions and cooperation between humans, co-workers, and interactive technologies and AI. This aspect refers to the study of multi-user interactions with different HMIs and interactive systems that provide both multiple views of an HMI and coordinate the user actions in groups.

3. Working environment focuses on the physical factory, looking at designs that are resilient to environmental risks as well as sustainable in their construction, operation and end of life disassembly. This refers to studying how digital transformation will affect the operator/technician, its workspace and the nature of work in general by creating new interactions not only between humans and machines, but also between digital and physical worlds.

Outcome

Investigating the current interactions carried out in the workforce population can inform innovative design decisions for future equipment. Analysing how the workforce currently interacts with technology, their social values, and the changing personal expectations of workers, in particular Millennials, in respect to future innovation, will produce guidelines with a large impact both on the talent landscape, and on the evolution of new business models. How will job profiles evolve? And what types of skills will be in demand? Deep Blue will examine critical drivers and challenges, to suggest design considerations for meeting the challenges of the new roles and jobs that could be needed in the future.

 

Please find more information on the Digital Technopole

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