Making Cognitive Ergonomics in the Human–Computer Interaction of Manufacturing Execution Systems Assessable: Experimental and Validation Approaches to Closing Research Gaps

Cognitive ergonomics and the mental health of production workers have attracted increasing interest in industrial companies. However, there is still not much research available as it is regarding physical ergonomics and muscular load. This paper designs an experiment to analyze the cognitive ergonomics and mental stress of shop floor production workers interacting with different user interfaces of a Manufacturing Execution System (MES) that is adjustable for analyzing the influence of other assistive systems, too. This approach is going to be designed with the Design of Experiments (DoE) method. Therefore, the respective goals and factors are going to be determined. The environment will be the laboratories of the University of Applied Sciences Amberg-Weiden and its Campus for Digitalization in Amberg. In detail, there will be a sample assembly process from the automotive supplier industry for demonstration purposes. At this laboratory, the MES software from the European benchmark SAP is installed, and the respective standard Production Operator Desk is going to be used with slight adaptions. In order to make the cognitive ergonomics measurable, different approaches are going to be used. For instance, body temperature, heart rate and skin conductance as well as subjective methods of self-assessment are planned. The result of this paper is a ready-to-run experiment with sample data for each classification of participants. Further, possible limitations and adjustments are going to be discussed. Finally, an approach to validating the expected results is going to be shown and future intentions are going to be discussed.