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New Industrial Work: Personalised Job Roles, Smooth Human-Machine Teamwork and Support for Well-Being at Work

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Abstract

Industry 4.0 is changing factory floor work towards knowledge work and novel digital tools provide new opportunities for factory operators, as illustrated in Operator 4.0 visions. We have studied worker expectations towards the change in large-scale surveys with factory floor workers in Finland. Based on the results of the surveys, Operator 4.0 literature and our earlier studies, we analyse how factory operators’ work is changing and how well-being at work can be supported in the Industry 4.0 transformation. We present a vision of future industrial work with personalised job roles, smooth teamwork in human-machine teams, and support for well-being at work. We conclude the results by giving recommendations on how the new industrial work should be considered when designing and introducing Industry 4.0 solutions for the factory floor. The focus of the design should be human-machine teams and collaboration in them. The work community should be engaged in designing the new solutions, as well as related new job roles, training and on-the-job support. Impacts on well-being at work should be considered in the design and monitored during the transformation. Future factories are dynamic and resilient, and that is why new industrial work should be designed for continuous change.

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Acknowledgments

We wish to thank the members of Finnish Industrial Union for their insightful comments in the surveys. We also wish to thank our colleagues at VTT for participating in developing the vision of new industrial work, and Hanna Lammi for the graphic illustrations.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd, Tampere, Finland

    Eija Kaasinen & Päivi Heikkilä

  2. Finnish Industrial Union, Helsinki, Finland

    Anu-Hanna Anttila

Authors
  1. Eija Kaasinen
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  2. Anu-Hanna Anttila
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  3. Päivi Heikkilä
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Correspondence to Eija Kaasinen .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute Industrial IT, OWL University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Lemgo, Germany

    Carsten Röcker

  2. Institute Industrial IT, OWL University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Lemgo, Germany, Human-Centered Information Systems, Clausthal University of Technology, Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Germany

    Sebastian Büttner

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Kaasinen, E., Anttila, AH., Heikkilä, P. (2023). New Industrial Work: Personalised Job Roles, Smooth Human-Machine Teamwork and Support for Well-Being at Work. In: Röcker, C., Büttner, S. (eds) Human-Technology Interaction. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99235-4_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99235-4_11

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-99235-4

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