FACTS4WORKERS

In August 2018 the final Beta version of the FACTS4WORKERS shop-floor user-interface solution was successfully installed at the Hidria Dieseltec production lines in Tolmin, Slovenia.  The solution’s final version internally known as the Hidria Knowledge Management System is currently undergoing a series of tests and shall be fully operative in November 2018. The FACTS4WORKERS solution is very adaptable and modular; it is currently being used on two full automatic lines and one manual machine. In the next month expansion on three additional automatic machines/lines is planned.

The purpose of the FACTS4WORKERS solution – software being mostly developed by University of Firenze with hardware compatibility issues being addressed by Evolaris and employees’ preference analysis provided by ITAINNOVA – vastly improves the work performed at the company shop floor.

The FACTS4WORKERS solution presented at the Hidria Dieseltec plant is a use-case involving an already highly automatized production process. The Hidria Dieseltec business unit manufactures glow plugs for light and heavy-duty vehicles for the European automotive industry. In addition the FACTS4WORKERS development partners needed to take into account the already operating lines –  all manufactured in-house – together with their software and hardware specifics.

The FACTS4WORKERS solution addresses issue of improving working conditions for manufacturing line operators and technicians and maintenance staff. The final solution enables the workers to insert errors and faults that might occur during the process. In significantly eases solution of rarely occuring mistakes whose solving process can be quickly forgotten. This is especially true with some product faults or damage that might occur, or with increased scrap characteristics at a certain point in the process.

The solution upgrades the current paper based error data sheets at a separate shop floor workplace being replaced with a fully electronic database.

The solution enables different options: 1) different logging in options (line operator, worker , leader, maintenance staff) 2) database filtering function 3) a special database pre-filtering function that gives the user the best possible solution by looking at its login data (worker, leader, operator) 3) database search function 4) solution provider

Download the free FACTS4WORKERS PRESS RELEASE which presents the project progress and solutions.

The FACTS4WORKERS 4-year project brings together 15 partners from 8 different countries and covers a variety of industry sectors: automotive, steel, tooling and plastics. Now we are entering the last project phase, rolling – out the developed solutions to the designated use-case shop-floor environments.

ISPIM conference was held from 17-20 June in Stockholm, where a network of researchers, industrialists, consultants and public bodies shares a passion for innovation management. The ISPIM conference attracted 530 innovation professionals from 41 countries and outstanding input from the vibrant local innovation community.

FACTS4WORKERS was attended at the ISPIM conference by Associate Professor Lea Hannola from Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT), giving a presentation of the research paper “Adoption of VR and AR technologies in the enterprise” (written by M. Heinonen, V. Ojanen and L. Hannola). The paper was selected by the Guest Editors of the ISPIM Creativity Innovation Management Journal Special Issue on “Digital Disruption” to take part in the paper development session.

 The annual Conference on Manufacturing Systems (CIRP CMS 2018) provides a platform for researchers and practitioners to present and discuss the advancements in manufacturing environments. This year, the conference focused on smart manufacturing and artificial intelligence

At the conference, TU Wien presented its latest research results on context-aware systems. Together with FACTS4WORKERS, the authors continue their efforts in developing a framework for the analysis and design of such systems. In that regard, the publication defines the term context in the industrial domain. Further, the authors determine and classify the components of a context as well as how this information facilitates in later development stages.

EVOCALL is a remote assistance system for smart glasses, smartphones and tablets. Specialists can use live video and audio to guide the process, send important information, for example circuit diagrams, data sheets or checklists, directly to the mobile device and thereby provide location-independent support in real time. EVOCALL supports commercial devices – smart glasses, laptops or mobile devices, Windows or Mac. No specialized or expensive hardware is needed. The access to EVOCALL is as easy and convenient as possible – simply calling the web-link and logging in allows using EVOCALL without any additions installation necessary.

At a glance, EVOCALL provides the following features:

Live audio and video transmission.

Recording live transmission.

Create screenshots.

Highlight objects in the screenshot.

Live document sharing.

Easy connect using a QR code.

Invitation management by email.

User administration.

For the application in Facts4Workers, EVOCALL was extended by a text-chat functionality. In addition to the existing video call the text-chat allows exchanging supporting material such as messages, photos and documents.

Summarized, EVOCALL provides the following advantages:

Minimizes repair time.

Increases plant availability.

Reduces travel expenses and time.

Reduces training costs.

Optimizes service and operating costs.

Overcomes language barriers.

The iKnow Conference took place from the 11th to 12th of October 2017 in Graz, Austria. Within the 2nd International SAMI 4.0 Workshop concentrating on Science, Application and Methods in Industry 4.0, the FACTS4WORKERS Project was presented. The presentation was held by Norah Neuhuber, researcher in the field of Smart Production & Human-Centered Solutions at Virtual Vehicle. About 25 participants, coming from various fields of profession, attended the workshop. The workshop concluded with a panel discussion on the overarching Industry 4.0 challenges and future impacts. A lively discussion about the social impacts of future developments emerged, where especially the reduction of the workforce due to the increased introduction of automation and the change of the workplace in general were central topics.

The MuC Conference took place in Regensburg, Germany, in September 10th – 13th, 2017. This symposium combines Human-Computer-Interaction and  Usability Professionals and encourages people from science as well as from practice to discuss the current state of the art.

The workshop “Smart Factory: Informationssysteme für die Zusammenarbeit der Zukunft” was organized in cooperation with the EU-funded project Semi40 – Power Conductor and Electronics Manufacturing 4.0. The submitted research paper “Evaluating worker-centered smart interventions on the shop floor” (written by Marlene Schafler, Lea Hannola, Francisco José Lacueva-Pérez, Matjaž Milfelner, Melanie Steinhüser, Miguel Angel Gracia) was held in the second workshop slot by Marlene Schafler, senior researcher in the field of Smart Production & Human-Centered Solutions at Virtual Vehicle.

The 24thInternational Conference on Production Research (ICPR) was held in Poznan, Poland, in July 30 – August 2, 2017. ICPR encourages the communication among researchers in the fields of production development, production systems and processes. It is one of the most important conference promoting research in the fields of production research and industrial engineering.

FACTS4WORKERS was attended at the ICPR conference by Associate Professor Lea Hannola from Lappeenranta University of Technology, giving a presentation of the research paper “An Evaluation Framework for the worker-centric solutions in production environments” (written by L. Hannola, F. J. Lacueva-Pérez, M. Steinhueser, K. Kokkonen, V. Ojanen and M. Schafler). The study presents an evaluation framework for measuring the impacts of sociotechnical interventions especially at the shop floor in production facilities. The FACTS4WORKERS presentation raised interest among the audience and e.g. there was discussion about how the project in going to collect and evaluate the production and log data from the factories in order to measure job satisfaction and productivity.

After our prototype was rolled out at the facilities of our industry partners, we can now present the results to date of our project on our website. The FACTS4WORKERS solution is currently being evaluated at

EMO Orodjarna

thyssenkrupp Steel Europe

Hidria Dieseltec

Thermolympic

Schaeffler and

Hidria Rotomatika.

Evaluation will assess the impact and reveal the capabilities of FACTS4WORKERS towards the promotion of a clear human-centric approach, usability, user experience and technology acceptance, while enhancing workplace attractiveness.

Between 21st and 22nd June 2017, the FACTS4WORKERS consortium hosted a representative of the European Commission Review team to showcase one of the developed prototype pilot solutions for one of the industrial use-cases at the Second Technical project review.

The Review meeting focused on showcasing the prototype solution for the Hidria Dieseltec industrial use case: application of a modern IT interface that can be applied to the diesel glow plug assembly lines – developed by one of the project partners Hidria Technology Centre – giving the maintenance worker the necessary data on stoppages, breakages and other problems that might occur 24/7 as well as giving him/her the necessary instructions and tips on solving the issue in a fast and rational manner.

The Commission reviewer, prof. dr. Paul Xirouchakis, was given a thorough presentation not only of the solution on the shop floor and response from the workers, but also on the work performed in the first half of the 4-year project. The structure of the solution (front-end, back-end, building blocks) was presented in great detail and the Reviewer also had a change to debrief representative of each of the other industrial use-cases on the solution implementation.

The FACTS4WORKERS project’s implementation scope ranges from automotive, industrial appliance and plastics to tooling and steel industries (as explained in the project video). All these use cases shall receive their first prototype solutions until early autumn this year. The remaining approx. two years of the proejct will be reserved for subsequent solution roll-outs with improvements made after a first assessment has been thoroughly completed. Special emphasis will be put on solution interchangeability among different use-cases since the goal is to ensure modularity of the developed solution that can be tailored and re-used at as many industrial sites as possible.

During the 16th and the 17th of May it was celebrated CEPAUTO 2017 . It’s a biannual event which was organized by CEP   –Centro Español de Plásticos-, the Spanish Cluster of Plastics and Composited. This year it took place in Barcelone as a parallel event of Automobile 2017 . It had around 200 attendees representing raw material providers, machine producers, automotive and automotive tier-1 providers or research centers.

Because of the nature of CEP members most of the dissertations dealt with the presentation of new materials, the analysis of the obtained products both from its ageing point of view but also from the perception of the users. However, this time some presentations dealt with Industry 4.0 adoption within the “plastic” sector were included in the agenda.

More concretely,   presented to Industry 4.0 different H2020 founded projects: Stream 0D , aiming to support the production of Zero defects products by simulating the injection processes to support the decision of the workers and FACTS4WORKERS . The first was presented by Leticia Gracia, the coordinator of the projects, and FACTS4WORKERS  was presented by Jorge Millan, CEO of Thermolympic .

According to the evaluation of the attendees, Leticia and Jorge’s presentation obtained a punctuation of 7.5 over 9 and it was one of the most valuated presentations. This is something we already knew because it was the one which generated more discussion (between machine providers and plastic manufactures) and questions. The questions were mainly directed to Jorge and deals with issues related with the acceptance and the satisfaction of workers with the “big brother” control, the issues (infrastructure, software, etc.) which should be considered and about the general process for implementing Industry 4.0 solutions.  Most of them are being covered by   works because, as Jorge said, “Or we’d take Industry 4.0 or it will take over us…”.

After the presentations within the ITAINNOVA  stand we established many contacts with companies interesting in the purposes approaches for deployment Industry 4.0 solutions. Hopefully, they would become in projects where FACTS4WORKERS  seed will derive in new project based implementations.

On 3rd May the FACTS4WORKERS consortium released its first project video.

The video gives the viewers the basic information about and ideas behind the project as well as giving him/her an inside look in application of the beta prototype version for Hidria Dieseltec industrial use-case. The video filmed at Hidria’s premises in Tolmin, Slovenia and gives the first impressions of the roll-out of the solutions developed within FACTS4WORKERS project. Roll-outs at other industrial cases are planned as well and the FACTS4WORKERS consortium will keep you informed about the latest status of achievements.

As in the past years, FACTS4WORKERS is hosting a workshop titled “Smart Factories: User-centred information systems for future collaboration” (in German origin: “Smart Factories: Mitarbeiter-zentrierte Informationssysteme für die Zusammenarbeit der Zukunft”) for the fourth consecutive year on the German-speaking Mensch und Computer 2017 conference in Regensburg. Some key people of our project team members will present and discuss the latest results and insights from our project.

 We are looking forward to interesting contributions on this topic. Please note that the conference language is german.

Call for contributions

… for the conference “Mensch und Computer 2017” (MuC 2017) in Regensburg.

Regensburg, Germany, September 10-13, 2017

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*** Erstfassung/draft : 26.Mai

*** Benachrichtigung/notification : 2. Juni

*** finale Fassung/final version: 3.Juli

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Website Konferenz / conference website: http://muc2017.mensch-und-computer.de/

 Workshop Themen:

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Aus Sicht von Menschen, z.B.

Welche Ansprüche stellen Ingenieure oder Produktionsmitarbeiter an Informationssysteme zur Unterstützung sozialer Interaktion und wie unterscheiden sich diese?

Wie kann der Ingenieur oder der Produktionsmitarbeiter motiviert werden, neuartige Informationssysteme in Smart Factories anzuwenden?

Welche Anwendungsfälle sind dazu geeignet, mitarbeiterzentrierte Informationssysteme in Smart Factories einzusetzen?

Mit welchen Herausforderungen ist der Ingenieur oder der Produktionsmitarbeiter in der Vorbereitung eines Informationssystem-Prototyps für den Einsatz im Produktiv-Betrieb konfrontiert und worauf sollte aus Anwendersicht ein spezieller Fokus gesetzt werden?

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Aus Sicht der Technologie, z.B.

Welche technologischen Ansätze wurden bisher entwickelt, um Kommunikation und Zusammenarbeit in Smart Factories zu unterstützen?

Wie können neuartige Technologien für die Analyse von Produktionsdaten verwendet werden, um Mitarbeiter in der Entscheidungsfindung zu unterstützen?

Wie wirken sich in diesem Zusammenhang neuartige Technologien, wie beispielsweise Cyber-Physikalische-Systeme, auf die Zusammenarbeit aus?

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Aus Sicht der Organisation, z.B.

Wie können neue mitarbeiterzentrierte Informationssysteme in bestehende Prozesse und Kulturen – und insbesondere in Produktionsumgebungen – eingebettet werden?

Wie sehen erfolgreiche Methoden zur Evaluierung von Arbeitszufriedenheit, Problemlösungskompetenz oder auch von Innovation-Skills (Umgang mit neuartigen Technologien, neuen Organisationsstrukturen oder mit steigender Komplexität) der Mitarbeiter in der Praxis aus?

Welche Einführungsstrategien haben sich bewährt, um Informationssystem-Prototypen in den Produktiv-Betrieb überzuführen?

Welche organisationalen Rahmenbedingungen befürworten/verhindern derzeit die Aneignung mitarbeiterzentrierter Informationssysteme in Smart Factories?

Wie können optimale Organisations- und Informationsstrukturen für Smart Factories ausgestaltet sein?

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Themen des Workshops: Speziell von Interesse sind Beiträge zu den folgenden Themen:

Methoden, Modelle und Technologien für Wissens- und Informationsmanagement mit Schwerpunkt Social Software in Smart Factories

Prozeduren und Praktiken für effektives Wissensmanagement mit Social Software in Smart Factories

Evaluation des Einsatzes von Social Software in Smart Factories (z.B. mit Hilfe von Mixed-Method-Ansätzen)

Neue Ansätze zur Informations- und Wissensvernetzung, sowie zur Informations- und Wissensvisualisierung in Smart Factories

Durchgängige Lösungen für eine Smart-Factory-Lernumgebung, welche sich zumindest für die drei Anwendungsfälle (i) Kurs-basiertes Lernen (classroom training), (ii) in-situ-Lernen an der Maschine und (iii) Dokumentation von außergewöhnlichen Ereignissen eignen.

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 Für alle Einreichungen muss eine der folgenden Vorlagen verwendet werden:

Autorenrichtlinien / Formatvorlage (Word, .dotx) (neu für MuC 2017)

Autorenrichtlinien / Formatvorlage (LaTeX-Paket) (neu für MuC 2017, v1.02 – zuletzt geändert am 9.3.17)

Hinweise für das Einbinden von Abbildungen in MS Word (PDF)

Wir freuen uns auf zahlreiche Einreichungen.

 Workshop Organisation:

DI Christian Kaiser, Virtual Vehicle Research Center, Graz

Dr. Alexander Stocker, Wissenschaftlicher Abteilungsleiter, Virtual Vehicle Research Center, Graz

Prof. Dr. Alexander Richter, Associate Professor for “Workplace Studies”, IT University of Copenhagen

Martin Wifling, Projektleitung FACTS4WORKERS, Virtual Vehicle Research Center, Graz

MSc Andreas Felsberger, ALPEN-ADRIA Universität Klagenfurt

Dr. Christian Kittl, Geschäftsführung, evolaris next level gmbh, Graz

As part of the Industry 4.0 vision, smart-workers will become the core of the factories of the future. Smart factories will require blurring the lines between the virtual and physical representation of the manufacturing processes, the machine settings and monitoring, the external events affecting manufacturing and the knowledge sharing and communication between workers supporting interactions between the worker and the factory at anytime and in anyplace.  Moreover, the role of workers will also blur as they will be required to perform different tasks of different knowledge areas.

HMI technologies are the window to the new shop-floor scenario for smart-workers. Many of them are well known because they are used in the consumer world or they are already applied in other industrial fields (such as logistic), they are starting to be adopted on the shop-floor.

As a consequence, when considering the adoption of technologies, in particular disruptive ones (i.e. Augmented Reality), for implementing a project different stakeholders must answer many questions: Which are the available HCI enabling technologies that can support the creation of Worker Centred Industry 4.0? Have the available HCI enabling technologies a TRL high enough for supporting the project goals? Is it possible to objectively determine the TRL level of a technology? Which is the TRL level of a system of technologies?  Once we evaluated our technologist of interest, how we can read it? Which are the conclusions we can obtain from it?

D2.2, Technology Monitoring: Report on information needed for the Industrial Challenges workers with taxonomy aims to advance in objectively answering these questions. Firstly, the report defines a methodology for creating, evaluating and reading a taxonomy of (HCI) enabling technologies. The methodology allows the identification of the technologies of interest and the evaluation of their TRL levels as a way to identify the assumed risks of using a given technology.

Secondly, D2.2 presents the result of applying the methodology for creating the FACTS4WORKERS reference taxonomy of technologies: the available HCI technologies which can support the implementation of use cases of the project together with the evaluation of their TRL levels.

Finally D2.2 presents two groups of conclusions. The first group of conclusions evaluates the taxonomy branches and their possible use by FACTS4WORKERS developers.  The second group evaluated the methodology itself.  It tries to find issues which are not clearly resolved or not resolved at all.  At the end, this second group of conclusions looks for opportunities of improvement of the methodology.

D2.2 is the second version of a series of 4 reports monitoring the HCI enabling technologies. The series was initiated by D2.1. It wants to show the evolution of the TRL levels of the technologies of interferes for the FACTS4WORKERS project during its execution.

An important aspect of our project is communication with the important interest groups. The Austrian Chamber of Labour represents the interests of 3,4 million employees and consumers and is very interested in the future development of the labour market in Europe. During his visit at the Virtual Vehicle, Josef Pesserl, president of the Styrian Chamber of Labour, could find out how Facts4Workers aims to make workplaces in the factory of the future more attractive and intelligent, and strengthen Europe as a production location. He could hear more about our worker-centric approach to increase problem-solving and innovation skills, cognitive job satisfaction and productivity, and make the worker a smart element in a smart factory. As we also evaluate all relevant cutting edge technology which might be used in future factories (here with the Microsoft Hololens), Mr. Pesserl could get an insight of a personalized augmented operator in a smart factory. - See more at: http://facts4workers.eu/index.php/president-of-the-styrian-chamber-of-labour-visits-facts4workers/#sthash.dAxLsTKO.dpuf

The long crisis of the manufacturing forced most of the local governments to acknowledge how this sector, strategic for many countries, is less resilient than expected. New business models are arising together with a large variety of new professions and competence areas. Manufacturing is not keeping the pace with most of these changes, maintaining in most of the cases its well-consolidated structure. In this period is crucial that Europe would look for a roadmap to the future production systems. Factories, often a symbol of resilience and robustness, are going to change dramatically. This change will not regard only the technologies that will be used but most important of all, the role and activities that the workers will play within them. The information revolution (internet revolution) that is changing the approach and the tools that we use to communicate with others must find their way also to the production plant in order to have modern and attractive workplaces. The arising stimulus toward digitization, which could be resumed in the principles of Industry 4.0, is going to provide to most of the production companies a reliable ICT infrastructure. However, technology is not the only driver that will allow European companies to remain successful: the human factor must be taken into the loop as well. The FACTS4WORKERS project aims to include in the definition of near-future companies also the human factor.

One of the Industrial Challenges of FACTS4WORKERS is the development of a worker-centric knowledge sharing and management system, while another deals with the setup of self-learning manufacturing workplaces. Both these two industrial challenges require that the competences and expertise of the workers will be shared within the plant. This is a requirement that intends to boost the satisfaction of the workers by creating a more collaborative, supportive and open-minded environment, where a worker could access a shared “treasure” of good practices and knowledge. In order to develop such a picture, FACTS4WORKERS consortium is developing and testing tools and approaches in real industrial environments. Regarding the software tools developed, the challenge is to create a user interface to the system as simple as possible and adopt strategies and tools similar to the ones already available on the most famous social platforms. In particular, the selection of the features to be considered for creating a social factory are the easiness to post multimedia content, the possibility to rate the quality of the posted content or to add comments and to be included in “feeds” and other distribution lists on specific topics.

Starting from these ideas, a system to share the knowledge of the workers in a social environment has been developed. The basic principle is to empower a worker using the shared experience of all the others in order to enable him to carry out tasks that are more complex and to gain autonomy. The social approach is responsible also for a more friendly and open-minded environment, where all the people are entitled to share their ideas and collaborate to the complex and common goal of managing a successful company. In order to have all the needed information on the top of the fingertips and allow a high degree of mobility, the selected HMI is a tablet-like solution. The application developed for the tablet allows each worker to look for possible solutions for an arising problem, to share ideas with peers, to rate the colleague’s content, and to have a social feedback about the submitted ideas and solutions. Additional features are the possibility to keep a continuous contact with the other colleagues, thanks to chat and video chat functionalities, and to be aware of the real-time performances of the process. A screenshot of the developed application is reported in the picture.