Towards a Methodology for Assessment of Operator Involvement in Manufacturing Development

• Industry is facing global competition and high demands on flexibility, customer adaptation, fast product realization, and rapid industrialization. Consequently, there is a significant pressure on manufacturing systems which requires increasing skill and competence at many levels in the company. This also requires organizations with high involvement of different actors in manufacturing development, why assessment of operator involvement is needed. An issue of growing importance is what strategy Swedish manufacturing industry should develop for the future. In this paper a methodology is presented including an approach for investigating how knowledge-intensive manufacturing can be described, identified and facilitated in 14 Swedish companies. Furthermore, the methodology includes investigation of operator involvement within product, production, organization, and information system development. As this is an ongoing project, the paper presents preliminary results from individual company analyses. However, conceivable results from the proposed approach include characteristics of companies with a great deal of operator involvement in development work, descriptions of implications for operator involvement, the need and use of information as facilitator for development, as well as hindrances and prerequisites for development. Finally, the project can be expected to result in a deeper understanding of how to identify and facilitate development work, in which the manufacturing system operator is well integrated.

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