Science Year 2018 – Working worlds of the future
The Institute for Industrial Engineering and Ergonomics was involved as a partner of the Year of Science 2018 under the motto “Working Worlds of the Future” to highlight and communicate the opportunities and potential of the working worlds of the future. In doing so, it addressed questions about a new interaction between people and technology, a possibly changed role of people in the process of human-technology cooperation, and the need to acquire expanded competencies in dealing with technology in informative and interactive formats.
Research topics
For “Working Worlds of the Future”
- Sociotechnical work systems: What does an optimal interaction between people, technology and organisational framework look like?
- Competence development: Which competences are required of employees in the course of increasing digitalisation of the working world? How can they be continuously improved?
- Flexibilisation of working time/place of work: What acceptance do concepts for flexible design of the place of work experience? What kind of networking is necessary for optimal working from the user's point of view?
- Flexible management: What is the attitude of employees towards artificial intelligence? Is a digital leader accepted?
- Digital production: How can the employee be supported in ergonomic behaviour in production (e.g. by exoskeletons)? What does employee-friendly collaboration between robot and human look like?
- Handling of sensitive employee data: How do regulations regarding data volume, data provision, storage purpose and storage duration affect the acceptance of employees?
These and other questions are part of the research work at the IAD.
Projects
Digitisation in medium-sized businesses
In the project Mittelstand 4.0, small and medium-sized enterprises are supported with workshops, expert discussions and projects to master the challenges of the changing world of work through digitization and networking in production. To this end, the use of assistance systems, data glasses and wearables is being examined in more detail. Further information on the project can be found here https://kompetenzzentrum-darmstadt.digital/
Change in Socio-technical Systems and Organisations
Change in Socio-technical Systems and Organisations
How to support change and transformation in companies? In the Strength project, an overall concept for the analysis and further development of individual and organisational resilience in small and medium-sized enterprises is being developed and tested. http://www.staerke-projekt.de/
Robots and leadership
What is the basic attitude of people towards the idea of technology in leadership positions? Can they imagine a robot as a colleague or even as a leader? These questions will be publicly discussed and backed up with facts within the Robot leads! project. Further information about the project can be found here https://www.hochschulwettbewerb.net/robotleads/
Robots in an industrial context
How can the potentials of humans and robots be combined so that, as a collaborative team, more than just the sum of the individual actors is created? What opportunities and risks does human-robot collaboration hold for the production of the future?
