Interruptions in manufacturing from a distributed cognition perspective (original) (raw)
Cognition, Technology & Work, 2016
This paper presents a study examining interruptions in the wild by portraying the handling of interruptions in manufacturing from a distributed cognition lens. By studying how interruptions occur and are handled in the daily activities of a work team at a large foundry for casting heavy diesel engines, we highlight situations when the propagation, transformation, and representation of information are not supported by prescribed work processes and propose recommendations for how this can be amended. The study was conducted by several visits to the aforementioned factory with cognitive ethnography as the basis for the data collection. The focus was on identifying interruptions and analysing these through a distributed cognition framework as an initial step towards studying interruptions in a manufacturing environment. The key findings include the identification of three, previously undefined, types of interruptions and the conclusion that interruptions do indeed affect the distributed workload of the socio-technical system and thus the overall production performance at the casting line.
The pursuit of cognition in manufacturing organizations
Journal of Manufacturing Systems, 2008
This paper mainly relies on the principles of incompatibility, or non-equilibrium, existing between the continuous growth in the level of environmental complexity and the insufficient cognitive capacity of the organization to deal with higher levels of uncertainty, to operate in complex task environments, to attend new market demands, to manage new approaches to customers' satisfaction and relationship, and to capture effectively information resources from the environment. It examines characteristics and limitations of past and current manufacturing organizations, and it extends their frontiers by proposing new technological, managerial and organizational capabilities of the new manufacturing organizations in the 21st century. From such an analysis, it introduces the concept of customer-centric systems which represent new organizational production models that pursue high degrees of organizational cognition, intelligence and autonomy, and consequently, high degrees of agility and flexibility, in order to manage high levels of environmental complexity, to operate through intensive mass customization, and to provide customers with immersiveness. From all these backgrounds, this research contributes by proposing the concept of new organizations with structure and processes of computational organization management networks. In such a new organization type, cognitive machines and cognitive information systems are prominent actors of governance, automation and control of the whole enterprize.
Proposing a taxonomy and model of interruption
2004
Abstract Interruptions not only decrease performance but can also cause human errors that lead to catastrophic events. Interruptions in high-risk industries such as aviation and nuclear power plants have been studied extensively because of catastrophic events such as power plant shut downs and plane crashes. In contrast, healthcare has a limited understanding of interruption despite the frequent occurrence of medical errors; often leading to adverse events and mortality.
Towards Flexible and Cognitive Production—Addressing the Production Challenges
Applied Sciences
Globalization in the field of industry is fostering the need for cognitive production systems. To implement modern concepts that enable tools and systems for such a cognitive production system, several challenges on the shop floor level must first be resolved. This paper discusses the implementation of selected cognitive technologies on a real industrial case-study of a construction machine manufacturer. The partner company works on the concept of mass customization but utilizes manual labour for the high-variety assembly stations or lines. Sensing and guidance devices are used to provide information to the worker and also retrieve and monitor the working, with respecting data privacy policies. Next, a specified process of data contextualization, visual analytics, and causal discovery is used to extract useful information from the retrieved data via sensors. Communications and safety systems are explained further to complete the loop of implementation of cognitive entities on a manu...
Integration and control of intelligence in distributed manufacturing
Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing, 2003
The area of intelligent systems has generated a considerable amount of interest—occasionally verging on controversy—within both the research community and the industrial sector. This paper aims to present a unified framework for integrating the methods and techniques related to intelligent systems in the context of design and control of modern manufacturing systems. Particular emphasis is placed on the methodologies relevant to distributed processing over the Internet. Following presentation of a spectrum of intelligent techniques, a framework for integrated analysis of these techniques at different levels in the context of intelligent manufacturing systems is discussed. Integration of methods of artificial intelligence is investigated primarily along two dimensions: the manufacturing product life-cycle dimension, and the organizational complexity dimension. It is shown that at different stages of the product life-cycle, different intelligent and knowledge-oriented techniques are used, mainly because of the varied levels of complexity associated with those stages. Distribution of the system architecture or system control is the most important factor in terms of demanding the use of the most up-to-date distributed intelligence technologies. A tool set for web-enabled design of distributed intelligent systems is presented. Finally, the issue of intelligence control is addressed. It is argued that the dominant criterion according to which the level of intelligence is selected in technological tasks is the required precision of the resulting operation, related to the degree of generalization required by the particular task. The control of knowledge in higher-level tasks has to be executed with a strong involvement of the human component in the feedback loop. In order to facilitate the human intervention, there is a need for readily available, user-transparent computing and telecommunications infrastructure. In its final part, the paper discusses currently emerging ubiquitous systems, which combine this type of infrastructure with new intelligent control systems based on a multi-sensory perception of the state of the controlled process and its environment to give us tools to manage information in a way that would be most natural and easy for the human operator.
Manufacturing in the wild – viewing human-based assembly through the lens of distributed cognition
Production & Manufacturing Research
The interdisciplinary field of cognitive science has been and is becoming increasingly central within human factors and ergonomics (HF&E) and, since at the same time, there has long been a call for a more systems perspective in the area with a somewhat wider unit of analysis. This paper argues that the theoretical framework of distributed cognition would greatly benefit the application of HF&E to manufacturing and would offer a more holistic understanding of the interactions between different entities within a greater context, including the social, cultural and materialistic. We aim to characterize and analyse manufacturing as a complex socio-technical system from a distributed cognition perspective; focusing on the use, mediation and integration of different forms of representations, tools and artefacts in this domain. We present illustrative examples from authentic manual assembly, showing the cognitively distributed nature of the work, ranging from scaffolding strategies of the individual worker to the emergent properties of a whole assembly line. The paper further proposes and provides benefits of using a distributed cognition framework as a novel approach in the toolbox for the HF&E discipline, where it may have been found before, but the application to manufacturing has been absent.
Distributed Cognition and IT support for Knowledge Work in Breakdowns: Match or Mismatch?
2004
Knowledge is instrumental in organisational problem solving and is embedded in organisational processes and routines. We explore the application of IT in breakdowns (forms of interruptions from normal organisational work routines) and illustrate the application of distributed cognition theory (DCT) as a useful lens to explain the exchange of knowledge in breakdowns. DCT also allows for a rich analysis of the role that information technology (IT) can play to foster knowledge exchange in breakdown situations. We use two cases to illustrate that DCT is useful in identifying the matches and mismatches in IT support for exchanging knowledge in breakdowns.
Supporting human interactions within integrated manufacturing systems
1998
Abstract Application integration is a focus of many major research initiatives. A driving force behind application integration is a desire for enterprise-wide integration of organizational business processes. On the surface, increased application integration appears advantageous–people are freed from mundane tasks and thus can focus on more serious issues. Yet, there are consequences that are not always recognized or appreciated.
Extending Cognitive Work Analysis to Manufacturing Scheduling
This paper discusses the challenges of applying tools associated with Cognitive Work Analysis to a domain that is quite different from the process control domain in which Cognitive Work Analysis was developed. The context of the paper is the design of a decision support system to aid scheduling of tasks within a manufacturing domain typical of job shops. The constraints in the supervisory control of a discrete manufacturing system are more intentional than physical. The paper explores the problems that arise with an intentional system and discusses how they might be overcome.