Basically, New Work means that people and their needs should be placed at the center of work organization and design. However, the discussion about the trend usually relates to knowledge-intensive areas of work such as administration or IT. This is an unnecessary restriction of New Work, as more added value, attractive workplaces and efficient tools are also important topics in production areas. There is enormous potential here.
People still have their place in the smart factory. According to experts, it is not so much the level of automation achieved that will determine a company's success, but rather the ability to master the growing complexity of production. And this requires, above all, qualified, flexible and motivated employees.
In terms of working conditions, this means more support, guidance and relief for each individual employee in individual, manual production processes. New Work in production with digital worker guidance offers decisive advantages here.
Efficiently designed work processes, modern workplaces and cross-team collaboration are important success factors for value creation in the production sector. However, rigid structures often hinder further development. With digital worker assistance, companies are establishing new mechanisms and thereby increasing execution efficiency and product quality.
The example of the assembly of complex assemblies shows the change brought about by New Work with digital worker assistance. The medium-sized company Alpha Verteilertechnik manufactures control cabinets that are made up of 4,000 assemblies, which in turn consist of over 30,000 individual parts. Customers can use a configuration module to put together their own individual control cabinet. The increasing complexity of the products and the growing shortage of skilled workers have led Alpha Verteilertechnik to strategically realign itself in order to ensure its assembly quality.
Previously, all assemblies/individual parts were managed in a database, which formed the basis for the assembly orders and assembly instructions. Excel was used to create the bills of materials for the corresponding order from the database and the configuration data, which were also the instructions for the worker or at least specified the order in which the assemblies were to be installed.
Depending on the configured control cabinet, the worker had to observe different conditions such as electrical parameters, dimensions of the housing, cross-sections of copper rails etc. during assembly. The information required for this was stored in different software programs. As a result, they did not come with the bills of materials from the work preparation department, but had to be collected by the worker himself during assembly. As a result, intensive work with parts lists, (CAD) drawings, mechanical values etc. was essential. Around 20 percent of the total assembly time was needed just to search for the right information for the work step.
In the case of Alpha Verteilertechnik, the digital worker guidance system weasl makes a significant contribution to improving efficiency in work preparation and assembly. It also reduces the workload of employees in quality control.
Bills of materials and assembly instructions are now generated generically by the worker assistance system, which has reduced personnel costs in work preparation. The skilled workers freed up are now used for other productive activities.
Furthermore, the worker no longer has to search for information himself. The system guides him step by step through each assembly operation and displays the relevant information.
The working conditions for employees in quality control have also been improved through the use of the worker assistance system. weasl automatically logs every work or inspection step carried out. This has significantly reduced the effort required for documentation and verification obligations. In addition, the reliable worker guidance system has increased quality and reduced expensive rework.