Doing Industry 4.0 – participatory design on the shop floor in the view of engineering employees
Open accessAbstract
Industry 4.0 features a cluster of diverse technologies. Implementing these in the enterprise will require a considerable amount of participation. Current forms of participatory design (Agile methods, design thinking, open innovation) more closely involve customers, but not generally the company’s own production workers. We investigate if and how the production engineers who will implement Industry 4.0 want to involve their colleagues on the shop floor. We present results of qualitative interviews, a quantitative survey and Q-sorts conducted with around 230 engineering employees of an automotive plant. Participating engineers were invited to express their viewpoints, experiences and visions on how production workers could be involved in the implementation of Industry 4.0. On the one hand, the data suggest positive attitudes towards, and experiences of participation. On the other hand, participation is demanding: respondents report a lack of time and opportunities. It may require more imagination and initiative to break through existing formal processes often restricted to “catch-up” improvements.
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The survey method and selection of interviewees in Case B were based on approaches from the German sociology of work tradition.
“The survey method and the selection of the interviewees were based on approaches from the German sociology of work tradition (Pfeiffer et al. 2019).”
From Keeping the organization in the loop: a socio-technical extension of human-centered artificial intelligence (2023) · cites this paper as Pfeiffer et al. 2019
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Herrmann, T., & Pfeiffer, S. (2023) · AI & SOCIETY · doi:10.1007/s00146-022-01391-5 · Cited by 173 · see citing works
“The survey method and the selection of the interviewees were based on approaches from the German sociology of work tradition (Pfeiffer et al. 2019).”
BackgroundMethodSelf-citation
- Authors
- Pfeiffer, S., Lee, H., & Held, M.
- Affiliations
- Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (DE)
- ORCID
- Pfeiffer, Sabine
- Venue
- Cuadernos de Relaciones Laborales
- Published
- 2019-10-15
- Volume
- 37
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 293-311
- ISSN
- 1131-8635 (ISSN-L)
- 1988-2572
- OpenAlex
- W2991395419
- Cited by
- 17
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 1 · 2020: 1
- FWCI
- 1.11
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- es
- Open access
- diamond
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by
- Locations
- Cuadernos de Relaciones Laborales (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering › Digital Transformation in Industry
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Information Systems Theories and Implementation
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management › Corporate Management and Leadership
- Keywords
- Industry 4.0, participatory design, production engineers, engineers, employee participation, automotive manufacturing, agile methods, design thinking, open innovation, technology implementation
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