Voice of the Workforce: Integrating the Workforce’s Perspective on Operator Assistance Systems into Human-centric Production

Manufacturing companies face challenges such as shorter product life cycles, higher demand for front-line employees and demographic change in their workforce. One solution to address these challenges is the introduction of Operator Assistance Systems (OAS) to empower the workforce. To ensure a successful implementation and usage of these OAS, however, it is crucial to engage operators in the implementation process. While previous work has shown that operator involvement is an essential driver for success, many companies struggle to manage the engagement of their front-line employees appropriately, which risks unnecessary project failures. Thus, our paper focuses on the Voice of the Workforce as a form of employee engagement, and analyzes how organizations can successfully and systematically aggregate and integrate the voice of their front-line operators into human-centric production systems. In doing so, we make two contributions: first, the design of a conceptual framework consisting of 8 practical guidelines for practitioners. Second, we provide suggestions on how these principles can be implemented by stakeholders in manufacturing.