Human-centric manufacturing workplaces: Aiming at increasing attractiveness and user experience

The pursuit of Human-Centric Manufacturing Workplaces is one of the strategic objectives of the industrial and academic research community, as a contribution to the creation of sustainable and attractive jobs in production. The concepts of User experience (UX), Interactive Virtual Prototyping (VP) and the connected scientific background can lead to new perspectives and methods for the design and evaluation of future workstations. The traditional focus on productivity and ergonomics, might be extended to encompass multisensory features and to consider the different usage stages in order to improve the experience of the workers and contribute to enhance the attractiveness of manufacturing workplaces. The application case of a train manufacturer’s is taken to exemplify possible results of the application of this UX and VP-inspired approach to the design of Human-Centric Manufacturing Workplaces. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2016. All rights reserved