Sustainable move towards flexible, robotic, human-involving workplace

Abstract

The realisation of the ideas of smart factories and sustainable manufacturing can be quickly realised in companies where industrial production is high-volume, low-mix. However, it is more di°cult to follow trends toward industry 4.0 in craft industries such as tooling. This kind of work environment is a challenge for the deployment of sustainability and smart technologies because many stages involve the so-called "manual processing according to the worker's feeling and experience. " With the help of literature review and testing in the production environment, we approach the design of a procedure for planning a sustainable technological upgrade of craft production. The best method proved to be a combination of a maturity model, process mapping with flowcharts, critical analysis, and customised evaluation model. Workplace flexibility, as a move towards sustainability, is presented in a laboratory environment on screwing performed by human wearing HoloLens and collaborative robot.