Designing a visualization tool to aid operators in decision making for manual interventions on assembly-line based processes

Abstract

After the rise of industry 4.0, there have been major in- novation to monitor the status of production processes amongst a plethora of industries. These innovations however, have mostly been aimed at monitoring pro- cesses and machines to convey their status, efficiency and technical problems, but failed to take into account the human element of decision making based on the information presented. Therefore, this research focuses on developing a visual aid to assist operators in the decision making process when executing manual in- terventions. A deeper understanding is gained on the information required by machine operators, their men- tal representations of expected information, and the type of decision making process that is applied. Using this newly acquired knowledge, several designs for a possible solution are brought forward, and their im- plementations benefits are discussed. We have found that a solid implementation can reduce stress in ma- chine operators whilst also increasing their efficiency. Further possible advancements based on the opinions of machine operators, stakeholders and other experts are discussed, and can provide a solid basis for further research.