Towards Adaptive Human-Centered Workplaces – Framework & Building Blocks

The research around human-centered manufacturing indicates positive contributions of technology adoption in reducing strain and improving efficiency of assembly execution. However, there is a lack of research, specifically with a high degree of customization at the worker level, investigating how the development of adaptive assembly workstations can be enabled. This is an important factor in the context of Industry 5.0 which relies on the integration between technological aspects, human factors, and ergonomic principles. Therefore, this concept paper proposes a framework supported by five building blocks to facilitate the development of dynamically adaptable assembly workstations, according to individual-specific characteristics. Drawing insights from case studies applied in real manufacturing environments and learning factories, each building block contributes towards the integration of methodological and technological factors to address existing application gaps concerning human factors within cyber-physical systems.