Towards Holistic Work System Design: Concept for a Method to Analyze, Represent and Evaluate Industrial Sociotechnical Work Systems

Abstract

When designing industrial work systems, Industrial Engineering encounters many established and emerging challenges and objectives. These include, for example, the consideration of ergonomic aspects, the implementation of lean production principles and harnessing the technological potential of digital transformation. This initial situation reveals the relevance of a contemporary, holistic approach for the analysis, representation and evaluation of industrial work systems that considers enduring challenges and objectives while also addressing upcoming ones. To meet this need, the authors outline a concept for a substantial method structured around five key components.Component I encompasses an approach for modeling industrial work systems. Component II defines a comprehensive target system for industrial sociotechnical work systems. This target system ensures that the evaluation criteria considered in the method are derived in a target-oriented manner and not arbitrarily included in the analysis. While components I and II establish the theoretical foundation of the method, components III to V address operational data collection, data representation, as well as data analysis for the work system. Regarding data collection, component III comprises a maturity model that adopts the structure of component I and reflects the evaluation criteria pointed out in component II. component IV shows how the collected data based on component III can be used for the digital representation of the work system using the concept of the Asset Administration Shell (AAS). Component V includes a target-specific evaluation of the work system, including a derivation of recommendations for work system design. Although the paper focuses on explaining the concept of the method and the process followed to develop the method, it also outlines a prototypical implementation of the method.

Keywords: Holistic Work System Design, Sociotechnical Systems, STS-D, Digital Transformation

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1005744