Documents manufacturing industry 417 results

"Industry 5.0 emphasizes human-centricity, sustainability, and resilience as its core characteristics, with a focus on developing socio-technical systems that enhance human health, safety, and well-being while fostering sustainable societal practices. The human-centric perspective places significant importance on human factors and ergonomics, aiming to align technological advancements with the needs and capabilities of individuals. In this context, artificial intelligence (AI) emerges as a transformative tool for advancing human factors and ergonomics by optimizing workplace conditions and supporting human-centered design principles. This paper conducts a literature review to explore the applications and potential of AI in addressing human factors and ergonomics challenges, providing insights into its role in shaping the future of human-centric systems within Industry 5.0."

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"It is often stated that algorithmic management disrupts control regimes and enables employers to dictate the work effort level. This article argues that control at work must be conceived through inherent tensions in employment relations and contradictions that result from the implementation of technologies in workplaces. Building analytically on two theoretical approaches (workplace regimes and power resources), conflicts over algorithmic management on the shopfloor are conceptualised through structural characteristics of workplaces and strategic factors related to workers' power. To illustrate these tensions, qualitative data is mobilised from a case study of the aluminium industry in Québec (Canada), where algorithmic management was implemented to advance efficiency and intensify work. The main contribution of this article is to highlight the persistence of an ‘embedded control regime,' which we explain through the structural characteristics of the sector under study (technology, production, and market) and the power resources mobilised by workers and unions. This study advances knowledge of the deployment of algorithmic management beyond the ‘gig economy' by exploring the avenues through which workers and unions can effectively contest such technologies in the workplace."

"Understanding the role of human management is crucial for the debate over algorithmic management—to date limited to studies on the platform economy. This qualitative case study in logistics reconstructs the actor constellations (managers, engineers, data scientists and workers) and negotiation processes in different phases of algorithmic management. It offers two major contributions to the literature: (1) a process model distinguishing three phases: goal formation, data production and data analysis, which is used to analyse (2) the politics of algorithmic management in conventional workplaces, which differ significantly from platform companies. The article goes beyond surveillance to elucidate the role of the regulatory framework, various actors' knowledge contributions to the algorithmic management system, and the power relations resulting therefrom. While the managerial goals in the examined case were not oriented towards a surveillance regime, the outcome was nevertheless a centralisation of knowledge and disempowerment of workers."

"This open access book presents a rich set of innovative solutions for artificial intelligence (AI) in manufacturing. The various chapters of the book provide a broad coverage of AI systems for state of the art flexible production lines including both cyber-physical production systems (Industry 4.0) and emerging trustworthy and human-centered manufacturing systems (Industry 5.0). From a technology perspective, the book addresses a wide range of AI paradigms such as deep learning, reinforcement learning, active learning, agent-based systems, explainable AI, industrial robots, and AI-based digital twins. Emphasis is put on system architectures and technologies that foster human-AI collaboration based on trusted interactions between workers and AI systems. From a manufacturing applications perspective, the book illustrates the deployment of these AI paradigms in a variety of use cases spanning production planning, quality control, anomaly detection, metrology, workers' training, supply chain management, as well as various production optimization scenarios."

"This book is co-authored by the STAR consortium members and provides a review of technologies, techniques and systems for trusted, ethical, and secure AI in manufacturing. The different chapters of the book cover systems and technologies for industrial data reliability, responsible and transparent artificial intelligence systems, human centered manufacturing systems such as human-centred digital twins, cyber-defence in AI systems, simulated reality systems, human robot collaboration systems, as well as automated mobile robots for manufacturing environments. A variety of cutting-edge AI technologies are employed by these systems including deep neural networks, reinforcement learning systems, and explainable artificial intelligence systems. Furthermore, relevant standards and applicable regulations are discussed. Beyond reviewing state of the art standards and technologies, the book illustrates how the STAR research goes beyond the state of the art, towards enabling and showcasing human-centred technologies in production lines. Emphasis is put on dynamic human in the loop scenarios, where ethical, transparent, and trusted AI systems co-exist with human workers. The book is made available as an open access publication, which could make it broadly and freely available to the AI and smart manufacturing communities."

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"Human-centricity, sustainability, and resilience are the core pillars of the Industry 5.0 concept. The human-centric perspective emphasizes the development of socio-technical systems designed to enhance human health, safety, and well-being while fostering sustainable practices that benefit society at large. This paper presents a systematic literature review to identify the key characteristics of human-centered work environments. The findings reveal growing interest in human factors and ergonomics, with notable gaps in cognitive ergonomics requiring further attention. Beyond ensuring safety and health, human-centric systems must address cognitive workload and well-being to maintain productivity, efficiency, and motivation, which are closely tied to a company's market performance. This study provides valuable insights for both scientific and industrial stakeholders, outlining the principles and requirements essential for the effective implementation of human-centric systems."

"Over the past three years, the cumulative Consumer Price Index in Bulgaria has reached nearly 35%, while inflation in the small consumer basket rose even more. Low and middle-income earners spend an ever-increasing proportion of their income on essential goods, which have risen significantly in price. Against this background, the trade unions in Bulgaria, through collective bargaining and negotiations at national level, have taken a number of actions. These have led to accelerated income growth that has largely offset the increase in the cost of living and prevented a loss of real purchasing power in the medium term. In Bulgaria, the presence of a collective agreement guarantees that the wage is at least 14% higher than in a situation in which there is none. The past inflationary crisis provides solid empirical information about the role of trade unions in the conditions of the imperfect commodity and labour markets in which the national economy is situated. Taking manufacturing as a focus, the author concludes that the number of challenges the industry has cannot be faced without an enhanced role for human capital."

"Using a large data set of German manufacturing establishments and various panel data models, the authors investigate the relationship between labour productivity and the use of fixed-term employment, taking account of the possible distortions that may result from self-selection into the use of fixed-term contracts. Their empirical results provide no evidence for the expected inverse U-shaped relationship between fixed-term employment and labour productivity, and testing for a linear relationship leads to mostly negative coefficients that are only significant in a few specifications. Overall, their results thus indicate that there is no significant relationship between the use of fixed-term contracts and labour productivity."

"Recent economic events have sparked debates over the degree of structural mismatch in the U.S. economy. One of the most frequent claims is that workers lack the skills that employers demand. The existing literature, however, analyzes this potential mismatch at a high level of aggregation with abstract indices and noisy proxies that obscure the underlying mechanisms. The authors address these issues by presenting and analyzing results from a survey of U.S. manufacturing establishments. The survey is the first, to their knowledge, to directly measure concrete employer skill demands and hiring experiences in a nationally representative survey at the industry level. The findings indicate that demand for higher-level skills is generally modest, and that three-quarters of manufacturing establishments do not show signs of hiring difficulties. Among the remainder, demands for higher-level math and reading skills are significant predictors of long-term vacancies, but demands for computer skills and other critical-thinking/problem-solving skills are not. Of particular interest, high-tech plants do not experience greater levels of hiring challenges. When the authors examine the potential mechanisms that could contribute to hiring difficulties, they find that neither external regional supply conditions nor internal firm practices are predictive of hiring problems. Rather, the data show that establishments that are members of clusters or that demand highly specialized skills have the greatest probability of incurring long-term vacancies. The authors interpret these results as a sign that it is important to think about factors that complicate the interaction of supply and demand—such as disaggregation and communication/coordination failures—rather than simply focusing on inadequate labor supply."

"In this work, we test the employment impact of distinct types of innovative investments using a representative sample of Spanish manufacturing firms over the period 2002-2013. Our GMM-SYS estimates generate various results, which are partially in contrast with the extant literature. Indeed, estimations carried out on the entire sample do not provide statistically significant evidence of the expected labor-friendly nature of innovation. More in detail, neither R&D nor investment in innovative machineries and equipment (the so-called embodied technological change, ETC) turn out to have any significant employment effect. However, the job-creation impact of R&D expenditures becomes highly significant when the focus is limited to the high-tech firms. On the other hand – and interestingly – ETC exhibits its labor-saving nature when SMEs are singled out. "