A Model to Estimate Operators’ Performance in Accomplishing Assembly Tasks

In the fourth industrial revolution, the digital network is the basis of smart manufacturing systems. In work environments 4.0, the operators’ role is drastically changed. There is increasing utilisation of innovative devices, and new technologies have changed work activities into more cognitive than physical tasks. According to scientific studies in the new industrial era, the operators’ skill to process the information related to a single task plays a crucial role in improving the manufacturing systems’ effectiveness. The methods available in scientific literature to assess the operator’s performance are mainly focused on the cognitive and physical efforts required by the task. In other words, they depend on tasks complexity and neglect human behaviour over time and the workers’ abilities. Therefore, an evaluation including the skills and properness of a specific operator to perform an assigned task needs more investigation. Consistent with this research gap, the paper aims to develop an information-based theoretical model allowing to estimate an operator’s performance index to accomplish an assembly job by evaluating both the tasks’ complexity and the operator’s skill. The model is applied to an automotive company to test and evaluate the potential applications of the methodology that go beyond the case study developed. The results proved the effectiveness of the model in estimating the operators’ performance, providing a job schedule based on task complexity and workers’ abilities.