Human-centered robotisation at KLM Engines

Abstract

The demand for robots in the industry is increasing. Organisations acknowledge the need to innovate in order to keep up with the competition. When robots were first introduced, they took over human tasks if they could execute the task faster than humans. However, this often has a negative effect on the meaningfulness of work. That’s why cobots were introduced, robots that could work together with humans in the same workplace. This provided the industry with many new opportunities. However, as with any new technology, research has to be done to find out how this technology can best be implemented. That’s why FRAIM was founded. They are researching how cobots can be introduced without decreasing the meaningfulness of humans’ work. FRAIM decided to join the Brightsky project, to take their research into practice. However, with the Brightsky project, FRAIM is facing other challenges. Not only does the technical feasibility have to be researched, but also the employees’ needs and other stakeholder values have to be taken into account. A challenge that can be perfectly tackled with a human-centered design approach.

Firstly, through interviewing and stakeholder mapping, the essential stakeholders are identified. These stakeholders have high power or/and high interest in the company and thus contribute to the future of the organisation. Afterwards, the stakeholders are brought together for a co-creation session. In this session, the stakeholders discuss their individual needs and values to identify the contradictions and similarities. Next, a shared vision is created, representing the stakeholders’ view on ‘optimising’ the workflow.
A stakeholder which is often negatively affected by the implementation of robots, is the employee, their needs are often neglected. That’s why this project’s focus is mostly on this stakeholder. During context mapping sessions, the themes of meaningful work are identified. These themes represent the conditions of meaningful work for the employees at KLM Engines.

During the research phase, it became clear that the stakeholders are unaware of the contradictions and similarities of their values. Furthermore, the knowledge and skills needed to understand the possibilities and limitations of implementing robots and their consequences on the stakeholders are lacking.
In the design phase, a co-design is created to tackle this challenge. Co-design is chosen, because it is well-known to be used for bringing together different expertise and for sharing knowledge and skills. Besides, the concept of game design is used. Game design helps to represent a real-life situation in a fun and engaging way and helps the participants to explore different scenarios. Using game design helps to visualise the consequences of robots on the workflow well.

The co-design is tested and evaluated to assess if the co-design meets the design requirements and to discover how the tool can be improved. A final iteration is done to improve the concept.

Lastly, the project is concluded and reflected on. The limitations of the project are discussed and future research and design recommendations are proposed.