The impact of digitalization and Industry 4.0 on the optimization of production processes and workplace ergonomics

Abstract

Terms such as Industry 4.0, Logistics 4.0, smart factory, smart logisticsas well as digitalization can nowadays be regarded as keywords in both scientific and economic practice. What is taking place at the moment is the beginning of the fourth industrial revolution, which is driven by rapid technological advancements, especially visible in the field of digital transformation, autonomous machines or fully automated warehouses. Strong competition on the domestic and foreign market and growing customer expectations suggest that manufacturing compa-nies should not only increase production on a constant basis, but they should find also a way to personalize it, which means manufacturing short series of products designed to meet the needs of specific customers, but also personalizing human work itself. In this system, or a kind of set-up, the role of the human and the con-sequent workload associated with a given job change. Technology is increasingly replacing not only physical human work, but also human beings as decision-mak-ers. It is giving rise to completely new situations, in which it is necessary to search for new forms of cooperation between human beings and the technological/ envi-ronmental ones. This kind of production is the ultimate goal of the fourth indus-trial revolution. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of digitalization and Industry 4.0 on the optimization of production processes, supply chain and human work. The authors discuss the concept of Industry 4.0, hence the fourth industrial revolution concerning system integration and networking. They present the assumptions of Logistics 4.0 and include adaptive, resource-efficient and user--friendly approaches, concepts. The authors also discuss the application of Lean management in the concept of Industry 4.0, and the ergonomic inclinations of the individual pillars of Industry 4.0. The conclusion summarizes the considerations on the impact of digitalization and Industry 4.0 on the improvement of production processes and work ergonomics.

Keywords

• industry 4.0
• production process
• ergonomics at work