Cyber-Physical Operator Assistance Systems in Industry: Cross-Hierarchical Perspectives on Augmenting Human Abilities

In production systems, manual tasks need to be considered more than the sum of repetitive sub-tasks which can simply be taken over by autonomous systems. Despite technological advances in automation, the presence of human operators remains essential on future shop floors. Consequently, it is of interest for manufacturing organizations how cyber-physical operator assistance systems (C.O.A.S.) can augment skills of operators on the shop floor. However, there is a limited understanding of how relevant stakeholders in manufacturing organizations assess the suitability of COAS. This is crucial in so far as the adoption of COAS significantly depends on the approval of stakeholders throughout the respective manufacturing organization. This paper explores how stakeholders in manufacturing organizations assess the role of COAS on future shop floors. This is realized by conducting an exploratory, multi-method, qualitative study encompassing interviews of executives, instructors, and operators. Additionally, the study incorporates ethnographic observations in industrial education. A result of the study is that informants expect COAS to be promising for manufacturing organizations if systems augment cognitive abilities of operators, rather than their physical abilities.