Junior Research Group "Promentat - Production Systems with Humans and Technology as a Team"

What is ProMenTaT?

The REACT research group "Wandlungsfähige Produktionsumgebungen" (WaPro, means Transformable Production Environments) investigated a holistic research approach that combines the perspectives of people, technology and organization to achieve transformability. In 2022, the REACT researchers were able to develop models and concepts to investigate the effects of adaptability on Saxon SMEs and to implement targeted measures for the realization of the same in the companies. The concepts were validated together with two application partners from industry. 

The focus of the junior research group "Production Systems with Humans and Technology as a Team" (ProMenTaT), which is based on this work, is research into the roles and tasks that people as individuals will assume in future production systems. The shortage of skilled workers, which will become even more acute in the coming years, will contribute to a drastic change in the demands placed on employees. While fewer skilled workers are available on the labor market, at the same time the demands on employees are increasing as a result of advancing digitization. In future production systems, people and technology will work hand in hand as a hybrid team. This collaboration will take place ad hoc and without lengthy configuration efforts. On the one hand, this requires new concepts at the technical level for increasing the anticipation capabilities of technical systems. On the other hand, new concepts are needed to make the actions of the technical systems comprehensible to humans and thus increase acceptance for these systems. Finally, new concepts are needed to map people with their knowledge and skills in a complex socio-technical system and to enable the technical systems interacting with them to integrate them ad hoc into value creation on this basis.

The aim

The project aims to explore concepts for the integration of people and technology in hybrid teams with regard to the design of a digitalised and green economy for manufacturing SMEs in Saxony. It pursues the goal of increasing the competence of young researchers with regard to a stable, green, sustainable and digital economy in the Free State of Saxony. It is intended to contribute to increasing the transfer of knowledge and technology and to building networks between Saxon universities and manufacturing companies. Through targeted further training, the young researchers are enabled to contribute their knowledge, research results and experience to university teaching and concepts for lifelong learning. With this technical and methodological knowledge, they will be able to contribute significantly to designing future production systems at Saxon SMEs in such a way that they integrate people into the work system in a way that is appropriate to their needs and qualifications, thus creating hybrid human-technology teams.

The subprojects

The junior researchers are working on the following subprojects (SP): 

• Concepts for the evaluation, planning and design of hybrid teams from the perspective of value creation networks - TV leader: Prof. Reichelt 
• Requirements for factory and material flow planning for the realisation of hybrid teams SP leader: Prof. Reichelt 
• Concepts for the design of human-machine interfaces in hybrid teams - SP leader: Prof. Kammer 
• Concepts for modelling the qualifications and competences of employees in production systems - SP director: Prof. v.d. Weth 
• Concepts for the design of hybrid teams at machine and system level - SP leader: Prof. Reichelt