The role of humans in flexible smart factories

Qiguo Gong, Guohui Chen, Wen Zhang and Hui Wang

International Journal of Production Economics, 2022, vol. 254, issue C

Abstract: In the smart factory of production automation, the setup between different products is the key to realizing flexibility. Compared with workers in traditional factories responsible for production and setup, workers in smart factories are only tasked with setup. Under this task variation, we model the optimal setup of a flexible smart factory, assuming that setup time is a convex function of the human scale. The model considers tradeoffs between machine production, setup, and mismatch costs. We find that the optimal scale of setup workforce increases as technological progress leads to a decrease in the production cost of a smart factory. Therefore, different from the general perception, there will be no dark factory for flexible smart factories. Heterogeneous orders in smaller lot size lead to a more significant role for human beings in flexible smart factories. If mismatch costs increase, more investment is required to reduce setup costs. There is a square-root relationship between the optimal scale of workforce and setup cost, product cost, and productivity under the strongest individual demand conditions. Our model enables a flexible smart factory to make more rational workforce planning and investment decisions.

Keywords: Setup; Smart factory; Flexibility; Human; Investment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925527322002213
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:proeco:v:254:y:2022:i:c:s0925527322002213

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpe.2022.108639

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Production Economics is currently edited by Stefan Minner

More articles in International Journal of Production Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().