Application of participatory design of work and assembly processes in a manufacturing system

许多制造业领域都面临着与需求波动和消费者对质量、便利性和价格的高期望有关的挑战。为了迎接这些挑战，制造和商业实践正在演变，更多地强调团队合作，例如并行工程产品团队。然而，为了真正有效，制造环境中的成员需要从多个角度参与。认识、理解和促进价值观是至关重要的，尽管这在各个研究领域都得到了倡导，但将正式的系统设计方法与社会技术系统理论(STS)相结合还不是一个成熟的研究领域，需要通过扎根和详细的案例研究进一步探索，例如这里为JamiesonTM实验室提出的案例研究。杰米森实验室在生产优质天然维生素和补充剂方面的创新和卓越表现得到了认可。在Jamieson配送中心，为各种产品设计和手动组装定制展示。自2003年以来，订单平均同比增长25.5%，目前已超过10万台。虽然这种增长创造了大量的商业和就业机会，但目前在流程多功能性(2012年有396种不同的显示器配置和独特的库存单元)、达到和保持质量标准方面存在挑战，这反过来又产生了重新设计显示器组装工作流程的需要。这项研究的预期结果包括改进了Jamieson配送中心的组装流程，以及对人与流程设计之间的关系的更多见解，这些见解可以转化为适用于其他人机界面环境的理论。

Many manufacturing domains are encountering challenges related to volatile demands and high consumer expectations with respect to quality, convenience, and price. To meet these challenges, manufacturing and business practices are evolving, with more emphasis being placed on teamwork, such as concurrent engineering product teams. However, to be truly effective, participation from multiple points of view from members in the manufacturing environment is required. Recognizing, understanding, and promoting values are essential, and although this has been advocated in various fields of study, combining formal systems design approaches with socio-technical systems theory (STS) is not a mature area of research, and needs to be explored further with grounded and detailed case studies, such as the one proposed here for JamiesonTM Laboratories. Jamieson Laboratories has been recognized for innovation and excellence in producing premium natural-source vitamins and supplements. At the Jamieson Distribution Center, custom displays are designed and manually assembled for a variety of products. Since 2003, orders have grown by an average of 25.5% year-to-year, and presently exceed over 100,000 units. While this growth has created substantial business and employment opportunities, challenges now exist in process versatility (396 different display configurations and unique stock keeping units in 2012), attaining and maintaining quality standards, which in turn has created a need to re-design the display assembly work process. The expected outcomes of this research include an improved assembly process at the Jamieson Distribution Center, and additional insights into relationship between people and process design that can be translated into theory applicable to other human-machine interface environments.