​As manufacturing industries become more digital and automated, humans have to be integrated better with these environments in order for factories to benefit from all the positive qualities of workers, while augmenting or compensating for their shortcomings with digital technologies and robots. 

This is according to Dr Dale Sparrow who obtained his doctorate in Mechatronic Engineering at Stellenbosch University (SU) recently.

As part of his study, Sparrow created a simple BASE (Biography-Attributes-Schedule-Execution) architecture that can automate many administrative and non-value adding tasks, while allowing workers to communicate better with machines and systems in the factory around them.

“We thought a digital representation of the worker that takes care of administration and communication was needed, so we called this concept an administration shell. We needed a structured way to implement such an administration shell, and the final outcome of the research is a generalised architecture called BASE which will guide developers on how to create such an administration shell.

“An administration shell implemented according to their developed BASE architecture will function like a personal assistant representing the worker in the digital factory environment allowing for better communication and control with other digital systems or humans."

Sparrow says BASE was specifically created to bring all the benefits of digital capabilities to human workers in order to leverage their strengths so that they can remain relevant in an ever-changing workplace.

More productive

According to him, one of the major issues with automated systems and human integration is the fundamental difference in communication and information processing between humans and machines.

“Allowing the human's administration shell to translate, remember and communicate digital information on behalf of humans allows them to benefit from digital analysis, scheduling, real-time communication and collaboration."

Sparrow says BASE was tested with workers on a factory floor and helped to increase their situational awareness and traceability of activities.

“It also allows them to be good at doing human things like problem-solving, organising and working with their hands, while the administration shell does the boring administrative and communication work. Humans stay relevant in industries that tend to move to over-automation, and can also make a contribution with their skills.

“Workers will be more productive, spending more time on value-adding tasks, and less on administration (writing things down, trying to remember exactly what they did, trying to explain problems, etc.).

“Since a BASE administration shell allows workers to make their observations and decisions available to anything else with such a shell, it becomes easier to share knowledge, training times decrease and it's cheaper to hire human workers.

“Your workers become more valuable since they contribute important real-time data to your factory's decisions. Training is cheaper since the administration shell can feed the worker information and record their actions, and workers can rely more on the aid given by the admin shell to perform complex tasks they would normally need extensive training for."

Communicate and collaborate

What makes this administration shell special is that it can communicate and collaborate with other BASE administration shells that belong to other resources or activities in a factory, says Sparrow.

“This means a machine that needs to contact a repairperson will tell its BASE administration shell to talk to people in the factory's BASE administration shells and find out from them who can help.

“The machine's administration shell will choose the most suitable person and tell that person's administration shell to ask him/her for help. The person's administration shell will then use his/her phone, email, earphones or any other way it can to contact the chosen repairperson and tell him/her the machine wants help."

According to Sparrow, all the BASE administration shells understand how to communicate with each other for scheduling and what communication is needed to execute activities. They also store and package data for analysis in the same way so that it is easier to retrieve.

He says each implementation of these shells can be customised with plugins that actually make decisions and perform actions.

“For example, a person may have a tablet plugin so he/she can press buttons to make things happen, or a machine may have a 'detect failure and report' plugin that will appropriately respond to the data in the BASE administration shell. How that report reaches the right person is handled by BASE."

Sparrow says the BASE architecture can also be applied to medicine, agriculture, mining, retail or education.

“We are currently presenting the platform to the mining industry and will hopefully eventually be able to help the public health system by equipping each patient with a BASE administration shell that can keep track of medication, check-ups, patient history and allow the patient's BASE administration shell to talk to those of doctors, staff and equipment."

Sparrow and his former supervisor Dr Karel Kruger from SU's Department of Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering are busy setting up a spin-out company Cybarete.

FOR MEDIA ENQUIRIES ONLY

Dr Dale Sparrow

E-mail: [email protected]

ISSUED BY

Martin Viljoen

Manager: Media

Corporate Communication and Marketing

Stellenbosch University

Tel: 021 808 4921

E-mail: [email protected]