A Service-oriented Architecture for Ambient-Assisted Living

Ambient-Assisted Living (AAL) is currently an important research and development area, mainly due to the rapidly aging society, the increasing cost of health care, and the growing importance that individuals place on living independently. The general goal of AAL solutions is to apply ambient-assisted intelligence to enable people with specific demands (e.g. handicapped or elderly) to live in their preferred environment longer by tools (i.e. smart objects, mobile and wearable sensors, intelligent devices) being sensitive and responsive to the presence of people and their actions. The research describes the design and development of a novel service-oriented system architecture where different smart objects and sensors are combined to offer ambient-assisted living intelligence to older people. The design stage is driven by a user-centred approach to define an interoperable architecture and human-oriented principles to create usable products and well-accepted services. Such architecture has been realized in the context of an Italian research project funded by the Marche Region and promoted by INRCA (National Institute on Health and Science of Aging) in the framework of smart home for active ageing and ambient assisted living. The result is an interoperable and flexible platform that allows creating user-centred services for independent living

An ergonomics study on manual assembly process re-design in manufacturing firms

Nevertheless process automation is a global trend, some specific phases (i.e., assembly) in highly technological sectors (i.e., medical, pharmaceutical, diagnostics, dental) are still managed by human workers, due to high-precision tasks and low production volumes. In this context, operators are forced to work faster and adapt to not ergonomically workstations and workflows. As a consequence, human assembly is frequently the bottleneck of the entire process due a not ergonomic layout and process design. The study was conducted at a medical equipment manufacturer, leader of dental equipment production, and focused on the analysis of the assembly process of the dental units. Workers at the assembly line were observed by experts and involved also by interviews and focus groups to detect the assembly issues and process jam. The research provides a valuable example of how physical, cognitive and organizational ergonomic problems affect the final process performance and how human-oriented re-design actions can be easily defined according to the proposed analysis procedure

Sustainability and Industry 4.0: Definition of a Set of Key Performance Indicators for Manufacturing Companies

Today, sustainability represents a fundamental concept to be developed and implemented in any industrial context. Therefore, it is essential to be able to measure sustainability performance by proper indicators, along the entire lifecycle and the value chain, considering environmental, economic, and social impacts. Moreover, every manufacturing company should have a specific measuring framework to calculate all the specific parameters. In this direction, the modern digital transition and Industry 4.0 (I4.0) technologies are proposing to transform human–machine relations, with a significant impact on social and organizational aspects. At the same time, digitization can help companies to define and implement sustainability by correlating production with proper evaluation metrics. The aim of this research is to provide a complete overview of sustainability Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) based on the Triple Bottom Line concept, referring to the three sustainability areas. Such an overview can be used by companies to set their specific KPIs and metrics to measure their sustainability level, according to their needs

Technical-business design methodology for PSS

Concurrent Design (CD) is a systematic approach to integrated product design that emphasizes the response to customer expectations and the combination of creativity and engineering. Such a concept represents also the basis of Product- Service System (PSS), which represents a valid way for companies to add value to their products, create new value propositions, and easily improve their solution portfolio. Indeed, the fulfilling of the customer needs is fundamental for creating successful industrial PSSs (IPSSs), which aim at combining products and services into a marketable solution. However, the integration of technical and business aspects is crucial to succeed. In this context, this paper proposes an integrated methodology for PSS addressing both technical and business aspects; it adopts a QFD-based approach to structure PSS information along the different process stages, considering four main domains: customer, functional, assets and network. It allows technical feasibility to be carried out and business framework to be defined at the same time to have a robust design concept and a reliable business model from the early design stages. The method is based on the direct involvement of the customer voice according to the CD paradigm. The proposed method also allows to define earlier the network of stakeholders and to dynamically reconfigure the network itself along the process, promoting the creation of the lean enterprise

A reference model to analyse User eXperience in integrated product-process design

The analysis of human factors is assuming an increasing importance in product and process design and the lack of common references for their assessment in industrial practices had driven to define a reference model to analyse the so-called User eXperience (UX) to support human-centred product-process design. Indeed, the recent advances in ubiquitous computing, wearable technologies and low-cost connected devices offer a huge amount of new tools for UX monitoring, but the main open issue is selecting the most proper devices for the specific application area and properly interpreting the collected information content in respect with the industrial design goals. The research investigates how to analyse the human behaviours of \u201cusers\u201d (i.e., workers) by a reference model to assess the perceived experience and a set of proper technologies for UX investigation for industrial scopes. In particular, the model has been defined for the automotive sector. The paper defines a set of evaluation metrics and a structured protocol analysis to objectify and measure the UX with the final aim to support the requirements definition in product-process design. The model has been defined to fit different cases: vehicle drivers at work, workers in the manufacturing line, and service operator

Benchmarking of Tools for User Experience Analysis in Industry 4.0

Abstract Industry 4.0 paradigm is based on systems communication and cooperation with each other and with humans in real time to improve process performances in terms of productivity, security, energy efficiency, and cost. Although industrial processes are more and more automated, human performance is still the main responsible for product quality and factory productivity. In this context, understanding how workers interact with production systems and how they experience the factory environment is fundamental to properly model the human interaction and optimize the processes. This research investigates the available technologies to monitor the user experience (UX) and defines a set of tools to be applied in the Industry 4.0 scenario to assure the workers' wellbeing, safety and satisfaction and improve the overall factory performance

the benefits of human centred design in industrial practices re design of workstations in pipe industry

Abstract Sustainable Manufacturing (SM) traditionally focused on optimization of environmental and economic aspects, by neglecting the human performance. However, the industrial plant's costs, productivity and process quality highly depend on the individual human performance (e.g., comfort perceived, physical and mental workload, simplicity of actions, personal satisfaction) and how much hazardous positions and uncomfortable tasks finally cost to the company. The present paper defines a human-centred virtual simulation environment to optimize physical ergonomics in workstation design and demonstrates its benefits on an industrial case study in pipe industry. The proposed environment aims at overcoming traditional approaches, where analysis are carried out at the shop-floor when the plant is already created, by providing a virtual environment to easily test and verify different design solutions to optimize physical, cognitive and organizational ergonomics

Cost Estimation in Initial Stages of Product Development – An Ontological Approach

Cost estimation in the early stages of the product development process is fraught with uncertainties. The conceptual design is characterized by the absence of data, the most critical being costs. Decisions based on incorrect assumptions impact a project significantly and can increase unexpected costs in the future. As there are no structured means of obtaining costs in the conceptual phase, the reuse of data from past projects is an alternative discussed in the literature. Knowledge management approaches suggest a search for data in successful earlier projects. The use of ontologies has been regarded as an approach to capturing either knowledge stored in database or tacit knowledge. The proposed solution, in the form of an expert system built upon an ontological model, seeks to estimate costs based on costs in previous projects as well as expert tacit knowledge. The model is demonstrated by queries with needed functions and requirements. The ontological model searches the necessary information and generates a cost estimation. The present research project follows the methodological framework Design Science Research, presenting an overhead crane as a case study. The proposed approach has great potential in other industrial contexts as well

from pss to cps design a real industrial use case toward industry 4 0

Abstract During the last 10 years, manufacturing companies have faced new challenges for improving their value proposition and being more efficient and effective on the market, satisfying the customer needs. According to this trend, several technologies have been developed and applied in different sectors and with different aims, in order to support such the companies in their reconfiguration. For example, the recent advances in Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) could give also to manufacturing industries the competences required to develop novel sustainable products embedded with a dedicated infrastructure able to provide more service functionalities to customer. In this context, the application of Internet of Things (IoT) have allowed developing the so named Product Service Systems (PSSs). Moreover, the cross-fertilization between such the technologies with the development of other ones have fostered the application of these novel ICT technologies inside the manufacturing companies also at process level. This approach has encouraged the study and development of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs). The present paper deals with a real industrial use case, where the application of ICT technologies and specifically the adoption of IoT at a plant of plastic extrusion pipes have allowed optimizing the production process in terms of energy efficiency

virtual maintenance simulation for socially sustainable serviceability

Abstract In order to achieve more sustainable development processes, industries need not only to improve energy efficiency and reduce costs, but also to increase the operators' wellbeing to promote social sustainability. In this context, the present research focuses on the definition of a methodology based on human-centred virtual simulation to improve the social sustainability of maintenance tasks by enhancing system design and improving its serviceability. It is based on the operators' involvement and the analysis of their needs from the early design stages on virtual mock-ups. The methodology proposed merges a protocol analysis for human factors assessment and an immersive virtual simulation where immersive serviceability simulations can be used during design phases. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, an industrial use case has been carried out in collaboration with CNH Industrial