Human-centred design in the industrial context

Four papers from the last couple of years:

The Benefits of Human-centred Design in Industrial Practices: Re-design of Workstations in Pipe Industry
By Margherita Peruzzini, Stefano Carassai and Marcello Pellicciari
Procedia Manufacturing – Volume 11, 2017, Pages 1247-1254
Sustainable Manufacturing (SM) traditionally focused on optimization of environmental and economic aspects, by neglecting the human performance. However, the industrial plant’s costs, productivity and process quality highly depend on the individual human performance (e.g., comfort perceived, physical and mental workload, simplicity of actions, personal satisfaction) and how much hazardous positions and uncomfortable tasks finally cost to the company. The present paper defines a human-centred virtual simulation environment to optimize physical ergonomics in workstation design and demonstrates its benefits on an industrial case study in pipe industry. The proposed environment aims at overcoming traditional approaches, where analysis are carried out at the shop-floor when the plant is already created, by providing a virtual environment to easily test and verify different design solutions to optimize physical, cognitive and organizational ergonomics.

Guidelines for Designing Human-Friendly User Interfaces for Factory Floor Manufacturing Operators
by Eeva Järvenpää and Minna Lanz
IFIP International Conference on Advances in Production Management Systems (APMS), Sep 2015, Tokyo, Japan.
IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, AICT-460 (Part II), pp.531-538, 2015
Advances in Production Management Systems: Innovative Production Management Towards Sustainable Growth. <10.1007/978-3-319-
22759-7_61>.
Agility and fast reaction to changes is required in today’s turbulent manufacturing environment. Unfortunately, the commonly used user interfaces (UIs) on the factory floor don;’t support such rapid reaction. Even though the human involvement improves agility and reactivity of production systems, it is also a source of uncertainty, especially when it comes to information inputting. Therefore, specific attention should be placed on human-friendly UI design, in order to improve the reliability of collected data and productivity of operations, as well as to make the workplaces more attractive for the future operators. This paper gives generic guidelines for human-friendly UI design and represents a case study in the context of manufacturing IT-system design.

Applying human-centered design methods in industry – a field report
by Sebastian Böttner and Carsten Rücker
Paper presented at the International Conference on Knowledge Technologies and Data-Driven Business, i-KNOW 2016, October 18-19, 2016, Graz, Austria
Human-centered design methods are nowadays widely used in the design of consumer products. These methods aim at designing products with a high usability and a positive user experience (UX). However, in the domain of the design of industrial machines, design is often driven by functional requirements mostly neglecting the usability and user experience of products. Together with a medium-sized manufacturer of industrial laundry machines we applied the human-centered design process in an industrial context. In this field report, we describe the human-centered design methods applied in the project, the adaptations we had to make in the process and the challenges and opportunities for applying human-centered design in an industrial environment in general.

Industry 4.0, Innovation and Design. A new approach for ergonomic analysis in manufacturing system
By Elena Laudante, 2017
The Design Journal, 20:sup1, S2724-S2734
The contribution proposes the individuation of innovative methods for the design of systems-products in production through the use of virtual reality, from the interaction between the discipline of design and the technology in the manufacturing systems in constant evolution. Industry 4.0 represents the transformation through digital information systems that generate a productive and socio-economic change and the level necessary to address the major contemporary competitive challenges.The new production paradigm a new level of human-machine interaction. The role of the person changes and takes on greater importance in the digitized factory through the contribution of Ergonomics, highlighting the centrality of design by the virtual ergonomics that allows the preliminary verification of the issues related to the postures of the operator of production during the working activities increasing the well-being. Virtual technologies and discipline of design anticipate new design experiences and multiple scenarios for the configuration of new products and services.