working man

The application of digital work assistance systems is gaining practical relevance on the shopfloor. Experience shows that the use of a work assistance system orients itself on the individual capabilities of its user and the specific work requirements. This excludes standard solutions. To order the variety of assistive functions in an application context, the assistance systems are classified in the present article. It also discusses the design requirements and applications use from an ergonomic perspective, which places the working man and his individual capabilities, which vary during working life, at the center of consideration. The reader can better assess the potential benefits and application limits of digital work assistance systems in an operational context.

In the course of digitization, the complexity and instability of business networks are considerably increasing. This has also serious effects on intralogistics. Under VUCA conditions, intralogistic systems develop into open, decentralized and self-organization networks of information-processing units. They adapt to the dynamic changes of their environment, by increasing their inner and outer varieties in a preventive manner. Digital technologies are not in a position to adequately control non-deterministic logistic systems; this task is essentially left to the working man. In order to overcome the challenges, appropriate models and methods of preventive work design are developed in the PREVILOG project. The paper presents cybernetic basics and preventive work design principles.