Background and motivation: Highly automated production floors pose many challenges to user
interface (UI) design, as system complexity must be conveyed while promoting operator's
situation awareness. Distributed MES (Manufacturing Execution System) systems
based on Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) facilitate flexible links among real-time
event-driven production floor components, and between the production floor
components and higher-level business functions, offering increased robustness
along with multiple options for process abstraction layers. This flexibility calls
for new conceptual approaches to factory UI design. Modern UI design frameworks
promote the use of ecological interfaces for conveying complex physical and
functional processes in a meaningful way, encouraging operator active
involvement. Maximizing the potential offered by SOA-based MES systems along
with adapting ecological UI design concepts to decentralized flexible factory
floor control is an open research challenge.
Method: We
utilize Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA) paradigms, such as Applied Cognitive Work
Analysis (ACWA), coupled with a continuous dialogue between UI designers and
system architecture developers. Thus, both UI and control software designers contribute
considerably to the shaping and structuring of the MES system. Conceptualizations
originating from UI considerations, as well as quota and information processing
demands, help formulate the architecture of the different agents embedded in the
target system.
Application: The
theoretical development is accompanied by a case-study design of interfaces for
the Integrated Manufacturing Technologies (IMT) laboratory at the department of
Industrial Engineering and Management in the Ben-Gurion University. The UI is
designed in parallel to the development of an SOA-based MES system for a
robotic assembly line which includes an RFID-fitted storage station, two
robotic workstations and a manual packaging station. Prototype interfaces for the
storage station and for the robotic pre-assembly station have been designed and
partly implemented. These UIs enable monitoring and controlling of both
physical and abstract layers of the stations, and have been tailored for
diverse use by keyboard, mouse and touch screen. As the
IMT laboratory is integrated in the curriculum of the human-machine systems
course, a special effort is given for documentation of the UI development
process for facilitating exposure of students to the process of advanced UI
design and its central role in the factory floor.
Future work and implication: We are currently finalizing the conceptual design and the
implementation of the MES and UIs of all factory floor components. A methodological
usability study will be conducted for assessing interaction with the abstract
constructs and software agents. Future research will test fluidity in UI design
in such environments, and to what degree the influence of UI design on system
architecture is mediated by the dominance of hardware functionalities.
Acknowledgments:
The
IMT laboratory is supported in part by Intel Israel (Intel mentor: Dr. Adar
Kalir), the European Community's Seventh Framework Program under grant
agreement no. FP7-284928 ComVantage, and the Paul Ivanier Center for Robotics
Research and Production Management.
