Avainsana-arkisto: industry

Good Business in Industries Needs Good Human Factors Knowledge and Management

Jan Dul & Jari Kaivo-oja:

Grand challenges in the industry in the Industry 4.0 era

Under the banner of ‘Industry 4.0’ a new industrial revolution is unfolding. New technologies and digital transformation force manufacturing companies to prepare for the future and to utilize new technologies for ensuring their competitiveness in markets. The road to a successful end result crosses a jungle of different new technologies, new possibilities of digitalization, and changing roles of humans. For survival, companies need new strategies and plan to reach their targets. Is the Finnish industry ready for this?

To be able to answer this question we need to ask if our “national machine” (ministry, decision-makers in industry, education institutes, politics, and the public opinion) is prepared for this inevitable change in industries. We already know that the industry sectors must acquire new technologies and make steps towards digitization. We also know that there is a huge need for increasing people’s skills and competencies in the industry to work with these novel technologies like Industrial and Service Internet of Things, AI, AR/VR, Cloud computing, Digital Twin tech set, Blockchain, sensory technology, 3D printing of different components, cobots for helping humans at work, Food security. Nanosensors in packaging to detect salmonella and other contaminants in food etc.

We also know the challenges of an aging workforce and the awareness that technologies take over many human work tasks, and at the same time, new roles and work tasks are coming for humans. Technological and human challenges go hand in hand and the human factor will remain a core element of a successful Finnish industry. Now there is a need for integrated humans and systems approach in the design and management of production systems and of future work. This allows to maximally use of the potential of humans as being part of the production system. This knowledge is largely available in the human factors and ergonomics field and can readily be applied in the Finnish industry.

In economic terms, low quality of integration of human factors creates a negative effect on the national economy e.g. due to inefficiency of the systems and cost of bad working conditions. Although we are economically and socially developed we are ergonomically undeveloped. This is not only a question of money but attitude and capability to utilize HFE (Human Factors Engineering) knowledge in general. The critical question is who will compensate for this kind of broad-scale negative effect in society or are just sending a high-cost bill to taxpayers?

For being successful we need to nurture this unused human potential in the right way. When designing or changing production systems we must ensure a mutual development of technology and manufacturing processes by using human factors in design for ensuring a good fit between the two human and the work systems, not only in large companies but also in small and medium-sized companies.  Do we have capabilities for making this happen at the national, industry, and company level? The simple answer is “no”. At the national level, industrial policies for technological development by the ministry of economic affairs (e.g. Renewing and Competent Finland 2021−2027 Program, TEM industrial sectoral reports, AI 2.0 Report etc.) are quite isolated from social policies for human development by the ministry of health and labor (e.g., future of work where integration of HFE in the design of systems and processes is neglected.) At the industry level, separate national policies are being discussed and implemented for specific industries in separate initiatives. At the company level engineers and other technical experts work on changing production systems separately from occupational health and safety (OHS) experts.

In Finland, Industry 4.0 is fully technology-driven, and attention to the human factor at work is fully driven by occupational health and safety. For example, the guideline of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health intends to help Finnish companies with health and safety issues only but is not taking into account optimizing the interfaces between humans and the other parts of the manufacturing process for improving the performance of the entire system, humans included. The same holds for the health-driven activities proposed in The Occupational health 2025 – In cooperation workability and health.

We can also wonder if the “Work 2030” vision and strategy take an integrative approach to link technology, economy, and human factors for enhancing the cooperation and development between these three core actors in the industry. The skill of HFE makes it possible to combine all needed collaborators and stakeholders together for integrating the HFE into engineering and management work. As a multidisciplinary field, HFE is a must and while respecting the identity of different fields we need to recognize the existing barriers to be able to do cooperation between different fields of knowledge.

The policy is needed for combining technologies, business, and people in workplaces

As a production system consists of all activities that are either produced by humans or by machines, the design of a production system is about designing both activities in concert. This means that even when technologies and digitalization are made for improving the performance of the manufacturing process, humans make the final impact on how things will go in reality – in good or bad. System performance can only be realized while taking into account the human factor. If human factors and ergonomics (HFE) are not orchestrated professionally in companies, large-scale negative effects are created in the whole society on the company and national level.

A ‘human factors’, the HFE approach ensures a fit between humans, technology, and the entire production process. It maximizes system performance while maintaining good standards of ergonomics. It means that systems, work, and works environment are realized for maximizing what technology can do, and what people can and want to do. In this approach technology, organizational and human expertise are combined and optimized for maximum output in terms of the economic and social goals of the system. International evidence shows that designing work processes in such a way can serve both goals simultaneously.

How can this be realized in Finland? What is our policy that combines the development of performance of the production processes and well-being of workers at the same time?

The Finnish Human Factors Engineering way  

What is the status in companies of the integration of HFE in the design and management while preparing for Industry 4.0? Now, according to the law, OHS-driven activity is a must for companies. In Finland, occupational health services and professionals help companies to develop the workability of the workers and ensure healthy and safe work environments. They focus on optimizing the load of the work for the worker throughout the whole work process and the work life. Good so far, but how will this be possible without HFE expertise in an era of Industry 4.0 where human-system integration is essential? HFE refers to Ergo Nomos = Work Laws of nature which is the science and theory for designing work processes. This internationally accepted definition of HFE and ergonomics is largely absent in Finland. Companies do not get this HFE knowledge from current OHS services and professionals when searching for and choosing new solutions to modern Industry 4.0 production. In Finish public opinion there is a common understanding that occupational health services offer ‘ergonomists for workplaces’, but this idea of ergonomics is limited to the health and safety of workers, and does not deal with system performance.

On the positive side, the Finnish law recognizes the difference between OHS professionals and OHS experts. The physiotherapist is one of the OHS professionals and the ergonomist is the OHS expert. However, the OHS field does not make a distinction between physiotherapists (who is called `occupational physiotherapists ‘in public) and ergonomist. In Finland `Occupational physiotherapist` represents narrow health and safety based definition of ergonomics. This has led to the situation that companies get most often an occupational physiotherapist for tackling true ergonomics issues instead of the ergonomics (HFE) expert that is mentioned in the law. This is an obvious problem in the Finnish work life at the moment. For these reasons, the multidisciplinary approach to the development of working life is thin from the broader system perspective.

Ergonomics is a science, theory and principles that takes a system approach and deal with the interfaces between human and other parts of the system. This means engineering kind of work for optimizing the work for human. HFE takes into account the physical, cognitive and organizational aspects of the work and work system. This approach is helping to integrate human via HFE knowledge as a part of the process proactively on macro and micro levels. In Finland, unfortunately, we see only reactive micro level OHS activity because of health problems of the workers. We cannot survive a long time with this kind of one sided and siloed OHS approach with health and medicine sciences. We need a national level policy that notice the need for fixing the gap between OHS activities and performance and productivity development activities in companies and public sector organizations for combining HFE and performance knowledge.

Figure 1. The Gap problem. Source: Jan Dul´s lecture in ERGO2030 Webinar, in the Palace, Helsinki, Wednesday 10.11.2021.

Innovations for integrating HFE for improving performance of the companies

For being able to succeed in this change in the industry for ensuring the competitiveness of our companies, the productivity of the work, and wellbeing at work, we need an integrated policy that leads OHS, HFE experts, and performance developers to define the performance factors to be noticed, studied, analyzed and designed for ensuring the fit between human and work system. It is good to be aware that part of the recent poor productivity development of work in Finland is due to poor human ergonomics knowledge in design. Solving this big problem needs understanding of the system approach where existing theories and practices are offered to the use of the companies in this industry and technology change process.                                                                                       

ERGO 2030 project brought as an example, facts and factors to be noticed for this systemic and organizational approach by creating a road map to be utilized in different industries and companies. However, this roadmap does not help unless we do not have a policy in Finland that facilitate the OHS and business/technology actors to work together and especially if the education and services of design ergonomics for work systems are not in place and available for companies and technology suppliers.

Let`s bring the key stakeholders around this topic of human, work, productivity, and well-being at work at the same table and listen to the needs and requirements for creating a mutual understanding how shall the national level roadmap looks like for ensuring the capability of our industry and wellbeing of the workers at work. In another case, we are not able to implement efficient digital and new technology transformation in the industry. This negative alternative will lead us to very slow organizational adaptation processes in industries, low work productivity levels, and to huge negative externalities to society. This big financial cost and bill will be paid by taxpayers.

And last but not least. Industry 5.0 is said to be human-centered but can it be realized without having HFE in place in Industry 4.0? The answer is `no`. Using HFE skills already in Industry 4.0 phase makes us better prepared for Industry 5.0 phase. If this is not taken into account now problems maybe even bigger in industry 5.0 what comes to HFE and phenomena related to that in work-life practices.

Jan Dul
Professor, Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, the Netherlands

Jari Kaivo-oja
Research Director, Finland Futures Research Centre, University of Turku

About the ERGO 2030 project

ERGO2030 project was funded by the Anita and Olavi Seppänen Memorial Foundation, founded in 2018 in Helsinki, Finland. The Foundation actively supports Finnish art and culture, and national orthopedic research as well as maintains the historic church and its environment of Tuupovaara in Eastern Finland.

ERGO 2030 report was published in 2021: Reiman, A., Parviainen, E., Lauraéus, T., Takala, E-P., & Kaivo-oja, J. (2021) ERGO 2030 – a roadmap for human consideration in the design and application of new technologies in industry. Tutu ePublications 3/2021: https://www.utupub.fi/handle/10024/152322

About the authors

Professor Jan Dul is a professor of Technology and Human Factors at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, the Netherlands. He has a background in the technical, the medical and the social sciences. His is a specialist in human factors and ergonomics (HFE) and studies the interaction between people and the physical and social-organizational environment to maximize business performance and human well-being. His research contributes to the design of successful products and services, and to the development of work environments for high performance (creativity, innovation, productivity, quality, health and safety). He is the winner of several national and international awards including the Human Factors NL award, the Hal W. Hendrick Distinguished International Colleague Award of the USA human factors and ergonomics society, the IEA Distinguished Service Award of the International Ergonomics Society, and the Liberty Mutual award for the paper ‘A strategy for human factors/ergonomics: developing the discipline and profession’. He has advised the EU and national governments about work environment policies, is a regular speaker at management events worldwide, and has shared his insights with companies on how to improve performance with HFE.

Dr. Jari Kaivo-oja is an Adjunct Professor and Research Director working at the Finland Futures Research Centre, University of Turku. He is a researcher in the Manufacturing 4.0 project funded by the Strategic Research Council of the Academy Finland. He was scientific expert in the ERGO2030 project. He has worked in various European research and development projects serving among others the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (European Foundation/Eurofound), the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU OSHA), the European Commission, the European Parliament and the EU DG Enterprise and Industry (DG-ENTR).

Articles

  • Reiman, A., Kaivo-oja, J., Parviainen, E., Takala, E-P. & Lauraeus, T. (2021). Human factors and ergonomics in manufacturing in the Industry 4.0 context – A scoping review. Technology in Society. 65, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2021.101572
  • Reiman, A., Kaivo-oja, J., Parviainen, E. Lauraeus, T. & Takala, E-P. ”Human work in Industry 4.0: A road map to technological changes in manufacturing”. Journal manuscript in review 

Chapters:

  • Reiman, A., Kaivo-oja, J., Parviainen, E. Lauraeus, T. & Takala, E-P. ”Human Work in the Manufacturing Industry 4.0”. Book chapter in review for textbook: Operator 4.0 by Springer.
  • Takala, E-P. & Reiman, A. Ergonomia. Article to Fysiatria. 6. edition 2023. Duodecim.

Conference papers:

  • Takala, E-P., Reiman, A., Parviainen, E., Lauraeus, T. & Kaivo-oja, J. (2021). ERGO 2030 – A roadmap for the implementation of human factors within the newest technology. In: Black, N., Neumann, P.W., Dewis, C. & Noy, I. (Eds.), Book of Extended Abstracts, 21st Congress of the International Ergonomics Association, Vancouver, Canada, 14-18 June 2021, pp. 389-392.

The final ERGO report:

  • Reiman, A., Parviainen, E., Lauraéus, T., Takala, E-P., & Kaivo-oja, J. (2021) ERGO 2030 – tiekartta ihmisen huomioimiseen suunniteltaessa ja sovellettaessa uutta teknologiaa teollisuudessa. Tutu eJulkaisuja 3/2021: https://www.utupub.fi/handle/10024/152322 

Picture Stefan Keller Pixabay 

An Emerging Technology Challenge: Digital Twins

Kommentoi

Mikkel Stein Knudsen and Jari Kaivo-oja:

With Digital Twins, organisations can not only create mirrors of real-world objects and processes but integrate physical and virtual worlds through bidirectional flows of information. With real-time simulations and intelligent algorithms, Digital Twins shifts the focus of data-driven operations from ex-post monitoring to ex-ante predictions and optimization in increasingly complex environments. Digital Twins are said to revolutionize the manufacturing industry, but it may also have major impacts on future studies and the general ways organisations anticipate the future. A Digital Twin development can be a new advanced form of scenario planning.

Finland Futures Research Centre takes part in the project Manufacturing  4.0  (2018–2020) for the Strategic Research Council at the Academy of Finland. Our contribution includes technological foresight related to the identification of promising technologies for the future manufacturing landscape in Finland. The concept of digital twins has featured heavily in our early scanning, as one of the most enterprising new advanced manufacturing technologies.

As the embodiment of Cyber-Physical Systems, Digital Twins has become one of the most hyped technologies of the so-called Industry 4.0. According to a comment in Nature in September 2019, “Digital twins – precise, virtual copies of machines or systems – are revolutionizing industry” (Tao & Qi, 2019). Many major companies already use digital twins, while half of all corporations may use them by 2021 (Gartner). For example, in Finland, Nokia is focusing strongly on Digital Twin challenges.

Digital twins are part of a vast shift in the world’s economy towards ‘mirror worlds’ as a new dimension of human life based on and fuelled by data. The emergence of these mirror worlds will bring about a distinct economy, and require new markets, infrastructure, institutions, businesses, and geopolitical arrangements, according to a recent special report in The Economist.

What are Digital Twins?

In its original form, a Digital Twin is the virtual model of a process, product or service, or ‘a digital representation that mirrors a real-life object, process or system’ (Panetta, 2018). While no general and precise definition of the features and scopes of Digital Twins has been reached (Cimino et al., 2019), a consensus appears of certain characteristics distinguishing ‘real’ Digital Twins from related virtual replications.

Kritzinger et al., 2018 operate with concepts of Digital Models, Digital Shadows, and Digital Twins (see figure 1). What sets Digital Twins apart is the real-time automatic dataflow in both directions between the physical and digital objects.


Fig. 1. From Digital Model to Digital Twin (own representation, after Kritzinger et al., 2018)

Talkhestani et al., 2019 elaborates this further including four necessary features in their definition of a Digital Twin: (1) A Digital Twin has to be a digital representation of a physical asset, including as realistic as possible models and all available data on the physical asset. (2) The data has to contain all process data, acquired during operation as well as organizational and technical information created during the development of the asset. (3) A Digital Twin has to always be in sync with the physical asset. (4) It has to be possible to simulate the Digital Twin of the behavior of the physical asset.

Fig 2. The conceptualisation of Digital Twin.

Summarily, as seen in Figure 2, we conceptualize digital twins as possessing five constitutive features separating them from other virtual models: They need to have counterparts or equivalents in the physical world (be it a person, an organ, a product, a machine, a traffic system, or an organisational environment/infrastructure). They need to provide a fair (= as precise as possible) representation of its equivalent characteristics. They must be updated automatically and continuously (in real-time, or close-to-real-time). It must be possible to simulate the environment of the real-world counterpart on the digital twin (achieving what Qi et al. deem ‘integration between entity DT and scenario DT’). Finally, there must be synchronization directly from the digital twin to its counterpart, so that the physical asset can also mirror new directions or alterations happening virtually to the digital twin.

Digital twins in systems theory and modeling

Until now, digital twins can roughly be separated into two categories (Zhidchenko et al., 2018). Either, they assist with the analysis of very complex systems (like transportation systems), or they provide real-time analysis of relatively small systems (like a vehicle). For complex systems, digital twins are means of providing a safe space for simulation of various potential developments and impacts. The idea of digital twins is thus born out of being a (much cheaper) virtual replacement of the identical twin spacecraft NASA always produced to have suitable test spaces. By using digital twins, it becomes possible to perform simulations using the real-time characteristics of their physical counterparts, even while these are in operation. This has enormous potential to limit operational risks, as well as for optimization issues.

However, the distinction between the two categories of digital twins is increasingly blurred. Digital twins for real-time analysis is being applied to more and more complex systems. If future digital twins, as seems likely, acquire functionalities – enabled by artificial intelligence and machine learning – which allow them to interact with other digital twins in a ubiquitous environment, even digital twins of simple systems will themselves be entities forming complex systems.

Personal Digital Twins

Digital twins are also moving out of the manufacturing halls and on its way into, well, you. Signals regarding digital twins for health are already appearing manifold. Last month, The Economist reported on ambitious cardiac-research plans to create digital twins of human patients’ hearts. Digital twins are also potentially important enablers for personalised medicine through “high-resolution models of individual patients that are computationally treated with thousands of drugs to find the drug that is optimal for the patient” (Björnsson et al., 2020).

In Finland, novel ideas of personal digital twins also appear in the context of the national AuroraAI-programme, which aims for Finland to ‘enter the AI age in a human-centric and ethically sustainable way’. A YouTube-video from the projects illustrates how you can ‘Let your digital twin empower you’. Futurist Osmo Kuusi has been a key contributor to development (cf. Kaivo-oja et al., 2019). Various technologies in the EU Foresight report “100 Radical Innovation Breakthroughs for the Future – The Radical Innovation Breakthrough Inquirer” indicate the high technical feasibility of digital twins.

Finding Finland’s niches

Manufacturing 4.0 believes Finland has the potential to be a leader in the Digital Twin-revolution, e.g. by developing and applying Digital Twins in strong niche markets. Department of Futures Technologies at the University of Turku has developed world-class digital models utilizing virtual reality/augmented reality, now commercialised through the spin-off company CTRL Reality. Researchers demonstrated their model of a virtual forest at the Finland Futures Research Centre’s Futures Fair in December 2017; this model was recently highlighted in the journal Nature calling for the world to Make more digital twins.

Other projects in Finland related to national strengths involve the environmental impacts of mining and mobile cranes. Usage of Digital Twins is also high on the agenda for the development and modernizations of ports in Pori and Rauma and as an element of the further take-off of the Robocoast-cluster. In Turku, digital twins are integral to the vision of creating a Smart and Wise Turku. Smart City Digital Twins is a major global research and investment area, and Finnish pioneer cities like Turku lead the way. Relying on a massive amount of data collected at high-speed from millions of sensors, there are finally also clear links between the rollout of digital twins and new demands for 5G and 6G networks.

What Digital Twins mean for futures studies?

The rapid trajectory of Digital Twins links with the disciplines of foresight and futures studies in several ways. First, it is in itself a trend to follow, analyse and speculate about the consequences of. It is also an embodiment of megatrends such as digitalisation, personalisation, and altered human-machine interactions.

At the same time, the very idea and definition of a digital twin as a vehicle of simulating the future makes digital twins an inherently futures-related technology. Futures studies-researchers and foresight practitioners must learn to utilize this as an important new tool in their toolbox. As one of its founding ideas, digital twins can provide a “safe simulation environment” to test future novelties, new products, new services, new organizational structures, new medicines, and smart infrastructures. This safety-oriented futures approach may be the most desirable way to use and apply digital twins systems thinking, and it could develop into a great futurist tool. How digital twins can supplement the identification of weak signals would seem like another fruitful avenue of investigation for future futures research.

Simultaneously, the theoretical baggage of futurists and system thinkers may be useful in shaping the field of digital twins. At present, the field seems primarily occupied by engineers and technology optimists, who may not always be aware of potential blind spots in their simulation models. A push might be needed to functionally integrate weak signals and wild cards into the simulations of digital twins. This will be another great topic for futures researchers in the years to come.

Mikkel Stein Knudsen
Project Researcher (M.Sc., Pol. Science), Finland Futures Research Centre, Turku School of Economics, University of Turku    

Jari Kaivo-oja
Research Director, Finland Futures Research Centre, Turku School of Economics, University of Turku.

– – –

The project ‘Manufacturing 4.0’ has received funding from the Finnish Strategic Research Council [grant number 313395]. The project “Platforms of Big Data Foresight (PLATBIDAFO)” has received funding from the European Regional Development Fund (project No 01.2.2-LMT-K-718-02-0019) under a grant agreement with the Research Council of Lithuania (LMTLT).

 

References and additional information:

Cimino, Chiara et al. (2019). “Review of digital twin applications in manufacturing”. Computers in Industry, 113. DOI.

Grieves, Michael & Vickers, John (2017). “Digital Twin: Mitigating Unpredictable, Undesirable Emergent Behavior in Complex Systems”. In Kahlen, FJ. – Flumerfelt, S. & Alves, A. (eds.) Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Complex Systems. Springer, Cham. DOI.

Kaivo-oja, Jari et al. (2019). ”Digital Twins Approach and Future Knowledge Management Challenges: Where We Shall Need System Integration, Synergy Analyses and Synergy Measurements?”. In Uden, L. – Tinh, IH. & Corchado, J. (eds.) Knowledge Management in Organizations. KMO 2019. Communications in Computer and Information Science, 1027. Springer, Cham. DOI.

Kritzinger, W. et al. (2018). ”Digital Twin in manufacturing: A categorical literature review and classification.”. IFAC-PapersOnLine, 51(11), 1016–1022. DOI.

Lu, Y. et al. (2020). “Digital Twin-driven smart manufacturing: Connotation, reference model, applications and research issues.” Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing, 61. DOI.

Qi, Q. et al. (2019). “Enabling technologies and tools for digital twin”. Journal of Manufacturing Systems, in press. DOI.

Saracco, Roberto (2019). “Digital Twins: Bridging Physical Space and Cyberspace”. Computer, 52(12), 58–64. DOI.

Talkhestani, B.A. et al. (2019). ”An architecture of an Intelligent Digital Twin in a Cyber-Physical Production System.” at – Automatisierungstechnik, 67(9), 762-782. DOI.

Tao, Fei & Qi, Qinglin (2019). ”Make more digital twins”. Nature. DOI.

Zhidchenko, V. et al. (2018). ”Faster than real-time simulation of mobile crane dynamics using digital twin concept”. Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 1096.

Warnke, Philine – Cuhls, Kerstin – Schmoch, Ultich – Daniel, Lea – Andreescu, Liviu – Dragomir, Bianca – Gheorghiu, Radu – Baboschi, Catalina – Curaj, Adrian – Parkkinen, Marjukka & Kuusi, Osmo (2019). 100 Radical Innovation Breakthroughs for the Future – The Radical Innovation Breakthrough Inquirer. Foresight-report. European Commission. Brussels. DOI.

Cover picture: Pixabay.com

Out of the cages: Here comes the cobots

Kommentoi

Mikkel Stein Knudsen and Jari Kaivo-oja:

Forbes, The Guardian, and Financial Times have written about them. The US Department of Commerce lists it as one of 5 Manufacturing Technology Trends to Watch in 2019. Cobots – short for ‘collaborative robots’ – are increasingly entering into industrial manufacturing, profoundly changing the ways in which humans and robots interact.

As one research article puts it, “robots have long left the cages of industrial settings: They work together with humans – collaboratively” (Korn et al., 2018). Smart Cobots are a key technology informing the futures of manufacturing; our research topic in the large Strategic Research Council-project Manufacturing 4.0.

What are cobots?

Collaborative robots differ from traditional industrial robots precisely in the direct interaction with human workers. They are intended to e.g. handle a shared payload without the need for conventional safety cages or separating protective measures. They are generally small, lightweight, mobile and flexible units, and they enable – at least in theory – organisations to leverage the strengths and endurance of robots with the tacit knowledge and agile decision-making skills of humans. Both humans and robots have crucial advantages (Fast-Berglund et al., 2016) – while robots ace repetitive and monotonous tasks, humans remain the most flexible resource in the system. Humans still handling unexpected and unplanned tasks better that their automated co-workers. A human-robotic collaborative approach also proved superior in experimental research settings compared to a similar purely robotic process (Bloss, 2016).

With its focus on flexibility the paradigm of cobots aligns well paradigms of Industry 4.0 – driving at increased automation and increased efficiency in parallel with increasingly flexible production processes, small batch sizes and mass customization.

A sector on the up

Industry forecasts for the near future market for collaborative robots are wildly positive, from global revenues of $7.6 bn in 2027 to the exceptionally optimistic 2019-prediction from the Robotics Industries Association of a $34 billion cobot market by 2026. This will require exponential growth from the current global market of around $600 million in 2018, which in itself was 50% higher than the year before (Sharma, 2019). The academic research output on cobots is also rapidly growing, as the assessment of articles indexed in Web of Science (Figure 1) shows.

Fig 1. Articles indexed in Web of Science with “collaborative robot*” or cobot* as title or keyword (From Knudsen & Kaivo-oja, 2019)

Until now, Finland has not been at the centre of this research. Out of a total of 496 articles in Web of Science published since 2015 (search: 1.1.2019), only 3 are affiliated with Finland. In a ranking of countries based on this data, Finland places 32th. A recent report for the Ministry of Finance in Finland (Rousku et al, 2019) also identified this problem, as well as collaborative robots as a key growth market, asking (p. 46): “Can Finland afford not to take a slice of a market that generates new wealth and new vitality for business and society alike?” A very good question – indeed.

Cobots may provide answers to megatrends

One of the reasons the future could be bright for collaborative robots is that they can answer to a number of different societal megatrends. As the research paradigm on cobots matures and moves away from strictly technological concerns, these links between societal drivers and cobots should be explored in much further detail.

An example, already prominently suggested in the literature, is that cobots may reduce ergonomic challenges and improve occupational safety and health e.g. in factory settings. By reducing the physical workload for workers, cobots can also enable work environments more responsive to older employees – a highly significant advantage given the changing demographics of labour markets across most industrialized nations.

Key global trends to 2030
(from ESPAS, 2015)		 Potential role of cobots
A richer and older human race characterised by an expanding global middle class and greater inequalities. Enabling inclusive labour markets more responsive to older employees, employees with disabilities.

Providing a work environment more responsive to human factors, ergonomic and OS&H concerns.
A more vulnerable process of globalisation led by an ’economic G3’. ‘Bringing manufacturing back home’; cobots as enabler of competitive manufacturing in high-cost environments.
A transformative industrial and technological revolution. A ‘gateway into factory automation’, enabler of semi-automated manufacturing choosing select elements of Industry 4.0 for optimized production process.
A growing nexus of climate change, energy and competition for resources. Improved resource efficiency, enabler of circular economy and remanufacturing
(Sarc et al., 2019; Huang et al., 2019).
Changing power, interdependence and fragile multilateralism.

In addition, collaborative robotics will be at the absolute forefront of the development of human-machine interactions, which will help shape important parts of our lives in the coming decades. Unlike most of our everyday interaction with machine learning-algorithms, our interaction with cobots has a distinct physical – see, feel and touch – element to it.

We therefore believe that understanding the topic of cobots, envisioning their deployment, and exploring both preferable and undesirable futures of and with cobots must be prominent future research topics.

Fig 2. Current frontiers of cobot research (based on Knudsen & Kaivo-oja, 2019).

Figure 2 shows some of the current frontiers of cobot research and technology, based on our initial literature review. For each of these pillars many research questions are rapidly arising, and they deserve our attention. Because robots are moving out of the cages and into a space near you.

Industrial robots have traditionally worked separately from humans, behind fences, but this is changing with the emergence of industrial cobots. Industrial robots have traditionally worked separately from humans, behind fences, but this is changing with the emergence of industrial cobots. To sum up, emerging cobot issue requires more attention in the field of Industry 4.0/Manufacturing 4.0. Cobots, or collaborative robots, are robots intended to interact with humans in a shared space or to work safely in close proximity. Service robots can be considered to be cobots as they are intended to work alongside humans. This “cobot approach” is very promising, because it focus on human-robot interaction from the beginning of industrial process planning. Typically, sensors and software are needed to assure good collaborative behaviour.

Summary

It is important to note that cognitive aspects and cognitive ergonomics are highly relevant for new digitalized work life. The IFR (Institute for Occupational Safety and Health of the German Social Accident Insurance) defines four types of collaborative manufacturing applications: (1) Co-existence Cobots: Human and robot work alongside each other, but with no shared workspace, (2) Sequential Collaboration Cobots: Human and robot share all or part of a workspace but do not work on a part or machine at the same time, (3) Co-operation Cobots: Robot and human work on the same part or machine at the same time, and both are in motion and (4) Responsive Collaboration Cobot: The robot responds in real-time to the worker’s motion.

All these types of cobots provide interesting possibilities and challenges for Industry 4.0/Manufacturing 4.0 activities. Are we ready to face these challenges?

Mikkel Stein Knudsen
Project Researcher (M.Sc., Pol. Science), Finland Futures Research Centre, Turku School of Economics, University of Turku    

Jari Kaivo-oja
Research Director, Finland Futures Research Centre, Turku School of Economics, University of Turku.

***

The project Manufacturing 4.0 has received funding from the Finnish Strategic Research Council [grant number 313395]. The project “Platforms of Big Data Foresight (PLATBIDAFO)” has received funding from European Regional Development Fund (project No 01.2.2-LMT-K-718-02-0019) under grant agreement with the Research Council of Lithuania (LMTLT).

***

References

Picture copyright Universal Robots A/S, case Hofmann