Summary
The Human Centered Smart Factories project aims to redefine workplace design in manufacturing through a proactive human-centered approach. Supported by NWO, this project focuses on the intersection of human factors, ergonomics, and smart industry technologies, seeking to create manufacturing environments that actively promote wellbeing.
The primary objective includes developing workplace designs that contribute to both the physiological and mental health of workers, going beyond traditional methods that only target ergonomic strain reduction. By leveraging advanced opportunities of smart industry technologies, cyber-physical systems, and human-centered design principles, the project aims at transforming labour-intensive manufacturing into an environment that fosters wellbeing, resilience, and sustainable productivity.
Key partners in this initiative include:
The project follows an interdisciplinary approach and brings together the University of Twente, Hogeschool Saxion, and Hogeschool Utrecht. It involves different disciplines like manufacturing systems engineering, human interaction design, co-design/creative design techniques, and human resource management.
Developments take place at Van Raam Reha Bikes B.V. as industrial implementation partner. The consortium is complemented with Ergos Human Factors Engineering and Ergo-Design -Industrial Engineering, in charge for ensuring feasibility and broader transferability of developed approaches.
University of Twente: Focusing on the following work packages
· Investigation of user needs, workplace elements, and process aspects to support conceptual development and design solutions.
· Development of digital methods in combination with sensor-based monitoring to identify ergonomic and process constraints, and derive recommendations for user-specific configurations of adaptive workplaces.
Role of the University of Twente
The University of Twente plays a central role in shaping the Human-Centered Smart Factories project by advancing frameworks that bridge manufacturing systems, human factors engineering, and technological enablers. This involves developing methods that integrate planning and operation layers, ensuring that workspace design and optimization are aligned with production needs. Conceptual solutions are initially tested at the University of Twente’s Learning Factory, followed by transfer to the implementation partner (Van Raam) for industrial validation.
