A Novel Diagnostic Tool for Human-Centric Quality Monitoring in Human-Robot Collaboration Manufacturing

The manufacturing industry is currently facing an increasing demand for customized products, leading to a shift from mass production to mass customization. As a result, operators are required to produce multiple product variants with varying complexity levels while maintaining high-quality standards. Further, in line with the human-centered paradigm of Industry 5.0, ensuring the well-being of workers is equally important as production quality. This paper proposes a novel tool, the “Human-Robot Collaboration Quality and Well-Being Assessment Tool” (HRC-QWAT), which combines the analysis of overall defects generated during product variant manufacturing with the evaluation of human well-being in terms of stress response. The HRC-QWAT enables the evaluation and monitoring of human-robot collaboration systems during product variant production from a broader standpoint. A case study of collaborative human-robot assembly is used to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed approach. The results suggest that the HRC-QWAT can evaluate both production quality and human well-being, providing a useful tool for companies to monitor and improve their manufacturing processes. Overall, this paper contributes to developing a human-centric approach to quality monitoring in the context of human-robot collaborative manufacturing.