Human-Oriented Design of Andon-Boards 4.0 – Promoting Decentralized Decisions on the Shopfloor and Acceptance by Employees

Abstract

Industry 4.0 and the increasing availability of real-time data enable decentralized decision making on the shopfloor. This allows new forms of collaboration, such as decentralized autonomous assembly teams. The Andon-Board 4.0 visualizes all relevant Key Performance Indicators like output, work-in-process, throughput time and productivity in a value stream based visualization which provides an intuitive overview for employees. With the help of these newly designed Andon-Boards, employees can independently decide which products to assemble, and in which order they need to be assembled. In addition, Andon-Boards signal whether employees are currently meeting production targets. The permanent visualization of key figures in production thus creates transparency regarding the relevant Key Performance Indicators. This paper investigates whether permanent visualization leads to increased performance. Furthermore, employee-related factors such as stress, satisfaction and motivation influence the work performance and work quality of the employees and accordingly of the entire production line. The paper therefore presents the underlying concept of the Andon-Board 4.0 in the Learning Factory Global Production as well as a behavioral economic experimental design to investigate whether this form of visualization increases employee performance. Finally, influencing factors as well as employees' reactions to the permanent display of value stream based performance indicators, such as productivity and quality of the production line, are discussed.

Keywords: Human-Centered Industry 4.0, Digital Shopfloor Management, Leadership on Shopfloor, Informationoverload, Behavioral and Experimental Economics