Analyses and Study of Human Operator Monotonous Tasks in Small Enterprises in the Era of Industry 4.0

Attraction towards Industry 4.0 is evolving in the academic and industrial communities providing new solutions to reduce the workload of human operators by integrating new technologies into the manufacturing processes. To reduce human operators’ time and/or reduce performance of boring tasks, collaborative robots (cobots) can be integrated into workplaces. The term cobots (collaborative robots) designed for cage-free work or that which contains robots that can directly work with human workers without safety barriers on the manufacturing floor. Recent cobots consist of human like arms which can be a supporting tool for the human worker or it can assist him as a co-worker in the same workplace. This paper provides results of study of human operator’s workplaces in small and medium enterprises (SME) to integrate enabling technologies of industry 4.0 and to find new solutions to reduce work load and to increase the productivity of production. In SMEs there are many cases where human operators perform monotonous tasks, implementation of cobots and mobile robots to the workplaces can provide good support for monotonous tasks of human workers, handling the tasks that require high precision or repeatability. The paper describes the integration of cobots into the workplace of a manufacturing company where monotonous, cumbersome and stressing activities affect the wellness of the workers. The paper analyzes the current workflow and the ergonomic load of the worker, further developing the appropriate task distribution between human and robotic operators and demonstrates open source technologies to accomplish human robot collaborative applications.