Assistive systems for quality assurance by context-aware user interfaces in health care and production

Rüther S. Assistive systems for quality assurance by context-aware user interfaces in health care and production. Bielefeld: Universitätsbibliothek Bielefeld; 2014.The reprocessing of medical devices is an essential procedure to keep hospitals operational. Workers at the Central Sterilization Supply Department (CSSD) clean, disinfect and sterilize medical devices and have to obligate to the manifold of legal and hygiene prescriptions. Failures during reprocessing can endanger patients' safety and increase costs. The process of decontamination has rich sources of failures because of the complexity of hygiene, medical devices and regulatory specifications. The benefits of an assistance system helping workers in preventing failures are therefore obvious and crucial. New interaction technologies such as augmented reality can potentially help workers in the CSSD to avoid failures during the reprocessing of medical devices. Challenging requirements for the application of new interaction technology within the CSSD arise through process complexity, legislation, integration and hygiene restrictions. This thesis proposes an assistance system that supports the worker in the unclean area of a CSSD with respect to these requirements. The system provides a user interface for context-aware worker guidance and collection of process relevant data from the worker. The proposed interaction mechanism of 'virtual touches' fulfills the hygiene requirements and is realized by an adapted workspace which is equipped with a depth camera and a projected user interface. The 'business process modeling notation 2.0 (BPMN 2.0)' standard is utilized to define process models that control the workflow, coordinate the system's components and maintain a database for quality assurance and worker guidance. In addition to an in depth description of the system, an evaluation with two user studies and interviews with CSSD domain experts are conducted throughout this thesis. The results reveal a high capability for failure avoidance during the reprocessing of medical devices without delaying the process compared to today's CSSDs. Additionally, CSSD experts appraise a high practical relevance and underline the feasibility of the underlying concepts for the CSSD domain. The concepts of the process integration, the standardized modeling of the workflow and workers' tasks as well as the context-aware interface are also helpful, relevant and applicable in the domain of manual assembly processes. Thus, this thesis describes, how the system can be transfered to the domain of manual production. The presentation of a prototype at a renowned international industrial fair and the accompanying feedback from manufacturing experts underline the scalability and the portability of the proposed assistance system to the production domain, which is a result of a component based system architecture utilizing process models for the coordination of computational devices and human workers

Innovation in manufacturing through digital technologies and applications: Thoughts and Reflections on Industry 4.0

The rapid pace of developments in digital technologies offers many opportunities to increase the efficiency, flexibility and sophistication of manufacturing processes; including the potential for easier customisation, lower volumes and rapid changeover of products within the same manufacturing cell or line. A number of initiatives on this theme have been proposed around the world to support national industries under names such as Industry 4.0 (Industrie 4.0 in Germany, Made-in-China in China and Made Smarter in the UK). This book presents an overview of the state of art and upcoming developments in digital technologies pertaining to manufacturing. The starting point is an introduction on Industry 4.0 and its potential for enhancing the manufacturing process. Later on moving to the design of smart (that is digitally driven) business processes which are going to rely on sensing of all relevant parameters, gathering, storing and processing the data from these sensors, using computing power and intelligence at the most appropriate points in the digital workflow including application of edge computing and parallel processing. A key component of this workflow is the application of Artificial Intelligence and particularly techniques in Machine Learning to derive actionable information from this data; be it real-time automated responses such as actuating transducers or informing human operators to follow specified standard operating procedures or providing management data for operational and strategic planning. Further consideration also needs to be given to the properties and behaviours of particular machines that are controlled and materials that are transformed during the manufacturing process and this is sometimes referred to as Operational Technology (OT) as opposed to IT. The digital capture of these properties and behaviours can then be used to define so-called Cyber Physical Systems. Given the power of these digital technologies it is of paramount importance that they operate safely and are not vulnerable to malicious interference. Industry 4.0 brings unprecedented cybersecurity challenges to manufacturing and the overall industrial sector and the case is made here that new codes of practice are needed for the combined Information Technology and Operational Technology worlds, but with a framework that should be native to Industry 4.0. Current computing technologies are also able to go in other directions than supporting the digital ‘sense to action’ process described above. One of these is to use digital technologies to enhance the ability of the human operators who are still essential within the manufacturing process. One such technology, that has recently become accessible for widespread adoption, is Augmented Reality, providing operators with real-time additional information in situ with the machines that they interact with in their workspace in a hands-free mode. Finally, two linked chapters discuss the specific application of digital technologies to High Pressure Die Casting (HDPC) of Magnesium components. Optimizing the HPDC process is a key task for increasing productivity and reducing defective parts and the first chapter provides an overview of the HPDC process with attention to the most common defects and their sources. It does this by first looking at real-time process control mechanisms, understanding the various process variables and assessing their impact on the end product quality. This understanding drives the choice of sensing methods and the associated smart digital workflow to allow real-time control and mitigation of variation in the identified variables. Also, data from this workflow can be captured and used for the design of optimised dies and associated processes