A human-cyber-physical system approach to lean automation using an industrie 4.0 reference architecture

The factory of the future requires flexibility and adaptability to satisfy market demands. However, these properties are difficult to ensure when collaborative manipulators are considered. Thus, approaches for integrating these devices, fostering the adoption of new engineering methodologies for augmenting manipulators are studied. In this work we address how integration of human operators with robotic manipulators might accommodate flexibility requirements using a concept of lean automation. To answer this question, we compare the current research in the field, and we propose a design structure which addresses safety, interfaces and design methods. Our results show safety hardware posing considerable constraints on flexibility. The human interface influences the workload perceived by an operator and, Industrie 4.0 reference architectures do not foresee the human and reconfigurable production cells yet. From a design prospective, this study emphasizes the need to take into consideration human and engineering aspects while planning for the factory of the future.