Dipartimento di Ingegneria Gestionale

Human-centric and Socially Sustainable Manufacturing

About the project

This research addresses the interdependencies and interactions between workers and technologies in manufacturing, taking into account the perspective individuals’ wellbeing, performances of the enterprises and societal issues. The project aims at generating theoretically and practically relevant knowledge, models and methods for the design and management of human-centric cyber-physical systems.

List of projects:

EU funded:

  • PERFoRM Production harmonizEd Reconfiguration of Flexible Robots and Machinery (http://www.horizon2020-perform.eu/),
  • BEinCPPS Business Experiments in Cyber Physical Production Systems (www.beincpps.eu),
  • FAR-EDGE Factory Automation Edge Computing Operating System Reference Implementation (http://www.faredge.eu)
  • MAN-MADE MANufacturing through ergonoMic and Safe Anthropocentric aDaptive
  • workplaces for context aware factories in EUROPE (https://www.man-made.eu),

Private funding:

  • Other (subcontracting): Digitalt Forsterkede Operatører  (Project funded by the Norwegian Research Council)

Principal Investigators:  Marco Taisch, Paola Fantini, Marta Pinzone

Researcher team: Paola Fantini, Marta Pinzone, Federica Acerbi

Funders:EU grants, private funding

Duration: On going, started in 2014

Partners: Multiple

KEY RESEARCH QUESTIONS
OUTPUTS & IMPACT

KEY RESEARCH QUESTIONS

In Industry 4.0 the material world of products and equipment can be connected with the digital world of control and information systems. Advanced sensing, communication, computational and actuating capabilities allow the integration of cyber and physical entities in manufacturing systems. Sophisticated methods and tools allow monitoring, optimizing, predicting, and controlling the behavior of processes and systems.

In this novel manufacturing landscape, the role and the tasks of human workers cannot remain unchanged, but need to evolve. New forms of interactions and collaboration with artificial systems emerge, enabled by technologies such as wearable devices, exoskeletons, virtual, augmented and mixed reality, simulation, artificial intelligence.

Since the deployment of the fourth industrial revolution is still limited, there is little knowledge and a lack of methods and tools that can support the exploitation of these technologies for the benefit of the business, the individuals and the society.

This research project aims to contribute to fill the above-mentioned gaps by addressing the following research questions:

  • How to jointly design cyber-physical-systems and human work, taking into account a human-centric and a production processes’ perspective?
  • How can social and economic sustainability be enhanced with cyber-physical-systems?

OUTPUTS & IMPACTS

  • P. Fantini, M. Pinzone, and M. Taisch, “Placing the operator at the centre of Industry 4.0 design: Modelling and assessing human activities within cyber-physical systems,” Comput. Ind. Eng., 2018.
  • M. Pinzone et al., “A framework for operative and social sustainability functionalities in Human-Centric Cyber-Physical Production Systems,” Comput. Ind. Eng., Mar. 2018.
  • G. Schönborn, C. Berlin, M. Pinzone, C. Hanisch, K. Georgoulias, and M. Lanz, “Why social sustainability counts: The impact of corporate social sustainability culture on financial success,” Sustain. Prod. Consum., vol. 17, pp. 1–10, 2019.
  • P. Fantini, M. Pinzone, M. Taisch, and J. Altesa, “Human-centric manufacturing workplaces: Aiming at increasing attractiveness and user experience,” in IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, 2016.
  • Fantini P., Pinzone M., Sella F., Taisch M., “Collaborative Robots and New Product Introduction: Capturing and Transferring Human Expert Knowledge to the Operators,” in Advances in Ergonomics of Manufacturing: Managing the Enterprise of the Future, S. Trzcielinski, Ed. Springer International Publishing AG 2018, 2018, pp. 259–270.
  • M. Fiasché, M. Pinzone, P. Fantini, A. Alexandru, and M. Taisch, “Human-centric factories 4.0: A mathematical model for job allocation,” in 2016 IEEE 2nd International Forum on Research and Technologies for Society and Industry Leveraging a Better Tomorrow, RTSI 2016, 2016.
  • M. Pinzone, P. Fantini, M. Fiasché, and M. Taisch, “A Multi-horizon, Multi-objective Training Planner: Building the Skills for Manufacturing,” Springer, Cham, 2016, pp. 517–526.
  • P. Fantini et al., “Exploring the integration of the human as a flexibility factor in CPS enabled manufacturing environments: Methodology and results,” in IECON 2016 – 42nd Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, 2016, pp. 5711–5716.
  • Fantini P., Opresnik D., Pinzone M. Taisch M., “The interplay between product-services and social sustainability: Exploring the value along the lifecycle,” in Advances in Production Management Systems: Innovative Production Management Towards Sustainable Growth,  von C. G. Umeda S., Nakano M., Mizuyama H., Hibino H., Kiritsis D., Ed. Springer, Cham, 2015, pp. 567–574.

PARTNERS

  • Academic: Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden), SUPSI (Switzerland), LMS Patras (Greece), Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (Switzerland), Polytechnic Institute of Bragança (Portugal),  Tecnológico de Monterrey (Mexico)
  • RTO: Sintef (Norway)
  • Corporate: Whirlpool (Italy), Siemens (Germany), GKN (Sweden, Norway), Engineering (Italy),