Antonio Padovano

Smart operators in industry 4.0: A human-centered approach to enhance operators’ capabilities and competencies within the new smart factory context

Abstract As the Industry 4.0 takes shape, human operators experience an increased complexity of their daily tasks: they are required to be highly flexible and to demonstrate adaptive capabilities in a very dynamic working environment. It calls for tools and approaches that could be easily embedded into everyday practices and able to combine complex methodologies with high usability requirements. In this perspective, the proposed research work is focused on the design and development of a practical solution, called Sophos-MS, able to integrate augmented reality contents and intelligent tutoring systems with cutting-edge fruition technologies for operators’ support in complex man-machine interactions. After establishing a reference methodological framework for the smart operator concept within the Industry 4.0 paradigm, the proposed solution is presented, along with its functional and non-function requirements. Such requirements are fulfilled through a structured design strategy whose main outcomes include a multi-layered modular solution, Sophos-MS, that relies on Augmented Reality contents and on an intelligent personal digital assistant with vocal interaction capabilities. The proposed approach has been deployed and its training potentials have been investigated with field experiments. The experimental campaign results have been firstly checked to ensure their statistical relevance and then analytically assessed in order to show that the proposed solution has a real impact on operators’ learning curves and can make the difference between who uses it and who does not.

A system for supply chains diversification and (re)design: supporting managers perspective in the face of uncertainty

Because of the stochasticity of the supply chain (SC) and the increased uncertainty due to the negative trend of the publishing industry that is trying to survive to new trans-media contents delivery, business firms are looking for advanced tools supporting them in (re)defining their business (diversification) and in (re)designing their own SC. Here, a multi-method, iterative, four-step procedure has been defined where a new and win-win integration between value stream mapping (VSM) and multi-paradigm simulation is achieved. Such framework is implemented into a DSS (called SmartDistr), equipped with dedicated GUIs that drive the user along its application and use. The potentials of the proposed approach are demonstrated through the case study of a business firm managing a regional distribution network in the publishing industry. To this end, the proposed case study shows how the SmartDistr DSS allows evaluating operational and financial performance measures along with managerial insights that enable managers to discern easily different business diversification and SC (re)design scenarios.