Development of a Model for the Integration of Human Factors in Cyber-physical Production Systems

The ongoing introduction of cyber-physical systems in many areas of manufacturing will create profound changes in work design. Examples are new computerized tools or changed tasks due to a new allocation of work tasks between humans and machines. Hence the possible utilization of the potential enabled by cyber-physical production systems highly depends to what extent they are designed for humans. Therefore, an integrated system design is required which includes the human factors at an early stage.This work serves as a starting point for the development of a design-to-human factors for cyber-physical production systems. On the basis of the present state-of-the-art of relevant scientific research a hypothetical model is developed, which shows the interdependencies between human-oriented work design and the resulting job performance in regard of cyber-physical production systems. We use an interdisciplinary approach consisting of research and findings from human factors, ergonomics, human-machine-interaction and work psychology in connection with engineering goals. The resulting model provides exemplarywork design actions for cyber-physical production systems.