Making Cognitive Ergonomics in the Human–Computer Interaction of Manufacturing Execution Systems Assessable: Experimental and Validation Approaches to Closing Research Gaps

Abstract

Cognitive ergonomics and the mental health of production workers have attracted increasinginterest in industrial companies. However, there is still not much research available as it isregarding physical ergonomics and muscular load. This paper designs an experiment to analyze thecognitive ergonomics and mental stress of shop floor production workers interacting with differentuser interfaces of a Manufacturing Execution System (MES) that is adjustable for analyzing theinfluence of other assistive systems, too. This approach is going to be designed with the Design ofExperiments (DoE) method. Therefore, the respective goals and factors are going to be determined.The environment will be the laboratories of the University of Applied Sciences Amberg-Weidenand its Campus for Digitalization in Amberg. In detail, there will be a sample assembly processfrom the automotive supplier industry for demonstration purposes. At this laboratory, the MESsoftware from the European benchmark SAP is installed, and the respective standard ProductionOperator Desk is going to be used with slight adaptions. In order to make the cognitive ergonomicsmeasurable, different approaches are going to be used. For instance, body temperature, heart rateand skin conductance as well as subjective methods of self-assessment are planned. The result of thispaper is a ready-to-run experiment with sample data for each classification of participants. Further,possible limitations and adjustments are going to be discussed. Finally, an approach to validating theexpected results is going to be shown and future intentions are going to be discussed.