A New Human-centric Factory Model

The traditional manufacturing concept puts tasks at the center of the production system and the workers’ role is rather passive. However, the workplaces of the future will be worker-centric instead of task-centric, and the role of the workers is expected to increase, leading to an optimization of the production performance. In this manner, it is of paramount importance to define new social sustainable workplaces where the human dimension is a key cornerstone, highlighting the requirements for shifting from a traditional task-centric production to a worker centric production. The idea of this study is to design the workplaces of the future and to understand how the worker's role will change in the next years, focusing on the workers’ perspective to create workplaces that fit to their needs. The study therefore highlights a new human-centric factory model and provides a taxonomy of the aspects to be considered in designing these worker-centric factories of the future. The EU-Funded Man-Made Project is used for the development and validation of the concepts of the research work utilizing case studies in the transportation and white-goods industries.