Autor: Eric Grosse

Digital transformation processes have a high tendency for delay, exceeding costs, and failure. This poses a significant risk in competitive global markets and shifting business models of entire industries. Successful companies have a different approach to new technologies than more traditional incumbents. Including the workforce in the transformation via change leadership in a digital transformation coaching process can reduce fear and resistance and can lead to a paradigm shift of approaching the digital transformation itself: as an agility driven, infinite game with high potential gain.

Warehousing is a very labor- and cost-intensive task in many companies. Digitization and automation of manual warehouse processes can increase efficiency, reduce costs and relieve employees. Collaborative robots that share work tasks with employees are increasingly used in warehouses. However, the pure techno-centric use of such robots can negatively influence the acceptance of human-robot collaboration. Various influences such as fear of job loss, higher cognitive stress, expected extra effort, or concerns about injuries can hinder human-robot collaboration and negatively impact economic benefits. This paper presents possible barriers to the acceptance of collaborative robotics in warehouses and discusses recommended actions for human-centered, sustainable human-robot collaboration.

The introduction of new Industry 4.0 technologies is changing job characteristics in many manual industrial sectors, especially in production and logistics, through automation and digitization. Depending on the extent and degree of maturity, these changes are perceived differently by employees and can have both positive and negative effects on job satisfaction and motivation. This article uses the example of workplaces in in-house logistics to highlight how their characteristics change as a result of the introduction of Industry 4.0 technologies. It also presents a process model that can serve as a decision-making aid for companies to consider important implications for the successful transformation process and to pursue the human-centric design of manual, technically supported workplaces.