Development of intelligent system to consider worker's comfortable work duration in assembly line work scheduling

Abstract

The Fifth Industrial Revolution, or Industry 5.0, is a way to bring collaboration between human expertise and intelligent machines in making customized products, where humans guide the intelligent machines and machines to support the human. The fundamental purpose of Industry 5.0 is for human well-being in intelligent manufacturing. This research aims to prevent the assembly line workforce from physiological work stress using an intelligent work scheduling system and support assembly line managers by avoiding worker work rotations during assembly time. The worker’s comfortable work duration time (WCWDT) is proposed through this work to be considered during the assembly worker’s work scheduling. A knowledge-based intelligent system (KBIS) is proposed to make the worker’s work scheduling by considering the WCWDT. The knowledge of the worker’s WCWDT is learned with a learning mechanism from the historical data of the worker’s WCWDT. The intelligent algorithm selects the workers from the available workforce and assigns assembly work by considering their WCWDT. Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and Assembly line worker assignment and balancing problem (ALWABP) frameworks are adapted for workers’ WCWDT data acquisition and worker selection, respectively. Moreover, the proposed KBIS is smart enough to prioritize the aged workers from the available workforce. Finally, a use-case illustrative example is discussed to describe the scope of this research for a multi-model assembly line.