The EU project FAIRWork is bringing humans, AI and robots to the table \u2013 well, the production\nline. Instead of profit maximisation, the focus is firmly on employee well-being.\nA team from JOANNEUM RESEARCH\u2019s DIGITAL Institute is using the latest technology\nfrom the Human Factors Laboratory to strike the necessary balance between\nefficiency and empathy.<\/p>\n
The EU\u2019s Industry 5.0 initiative may sound a little like science fiction, but it is aimed at bringing about a very specific change: ensuring that technology is no longer geared solely to boosting efficiency, but to empowering workers, too. Rather than maximising profits, individual well-being is what counts, with top-down decision-making giving way to employee participation \u2013 with the support of artificial intelligence. This is where researchers on the European FAIRWork project (which is funded through the HORIZON EUROPE programme) come in. Coordinated by Vienna-based BOC Products & Services AG, the project has brought together numerous partners \u2013 including the JOANNEUM RESEARCH DIGITAL Institute, Stellantis, flex, and various European universities. The goal is to design decision-making processes that are more human-centric, democratic and trust-based \u2013 cultivating heart and soul in industry, you might say.<\/p>\n
Demands on manufacturers are growing all the time \u2013 which also puts greater pressure on employees. According to Austria\u2019s Federal Chamber of Labour, around 2.5 million days of sick leave taken in the country each year are due to mental health- and stress-related conditions. \"Through the FAIRWork project, we\u2019re addressing this development with specially designed technological solutions,\" explains Lucas Paletta, Head of the Human Factors Laboratory at DIGITAL. These include automated analysis of calibration certificates \u2013 previously performed manually, this process is both time-consuming and prone to errors. Now, though, a newly developed AI can identify missing or contradictory specifications in documentation, which saves time as well as enhancing accuracy. No longer left with mountains of data to trawl through, employees can focus on value-adding tasks instead. A more efficient approach \u2013 which also delivers peace of mind. Here, AI serves as an assistant for decision-making: it analyses complex production data, recognises Patterns and, on this basis, proposes possible courses of action that are tailored to a given situation \u2013 as well as clear and transparent for employees. Ultimately, though, the final decision is always taken by a human \u2013 because AI should support people, not replace them.<\/p>\n
Lucas Paletta and DIGITAL Senior Researcher Herwig Zeiner are making an important contribution to the project together with their team. Researchers at the Human Factors Laboratory use the latest Wearable technologies as well as biosignal trackers to investigate how stress and resilience can be measured within production environments. \"We carry out objective analysis of the ways in which overwork occurs, as well as targeted measures that companies can take in order to increase employee resilience,\" says Paletta. \"The aim is to create a working environment where Technology adapts to humans \u2013 and not the other way round.\" The researchers have developed procedures designed to make individual stressors more visible without any stigmatisation. The findings feed directly into a new AI\nmodel that can take such factors into account, for instance when it comes to assigning production tasks. All of which will make production smarter and also more worker-friendly in future.<\/p>\n
by Elke Zenz<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n This work has been supported by the FAIRWork project (www.fairwork-project.eu) and has been funded within the European Commission\u2019s Horizon Europe Programme under contract number 101069499. This paper expresses the opinions of the authors and not necessarily those of the European Commission. The European Commission is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained in this paper.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Das EU-Projekt FAIRWork bringt Mensch, KI und Roboter an einen Tisch \u2013 oder besser gesagt an die Produktionslinie. Statt Gewinnmaximierung steht das Wohlergehen der Mitarbeitenden im Fokus. Ein DIGITAL-Team der JOANNEUM RESEARCH sorgt dabei mit Hightech aus dem Human-Factors-Labor f\u00fcr die n\u00f6tige Balance zwischen Effizienz und Empathie. Technologie f\u00fcr den Menschen Die EU-Initiative Industrie 5.0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":93789,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4664,4663,4665,4666,4276,2143,2144,4280],"class_list":["post-93766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-allgemein","tag-effizienz","tag-fairwork","tag-human-factors","tag-human-factors-labor","tag-industrie","tag-ki","tag-kuenstliche-intelligenz","tag-produktion","institutes-digital","business_areas-produktion-und-fertigung"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joanneum.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joanneum.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joanneum.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joanneum.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joanneum.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93766"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.joanneum.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93794,"href":"https:\/\/www.joanneum.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93766\/revisions\/93794"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joanneum.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joanneum.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joanneum.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joanneum.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Learn more<\/h3>\n
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