Performance Management Through Skill and Activity-Based Shop Floor Management (DSFM)

Funding type: SMACT IRISS

Duration: 30/06/2021 – 08/11/2021

The production of sinter metal components has a long tradition at GKN Sinter Metals and foresees forming powder to a solid mass of material using pressure and heat without melting it to the point of liquefaction. For overseeing required machines and ovens, GKN Sinter Metals has recently introduced an activity-driven shopfloor concept that assigns jobs to workers in a dynamic fashion, while each worker is equipped with a smart watch. The smart watch functions as a human-system interface and can be used to accept/decline jobs and to visualize further required information. The current system though lacks a stronger user involvement as well as transparency and thus, lets the user feel strongly dependent on a technology which logic is difficult to understand. This again negatively affects the user acceptance of the system. Thus, in the context of the proposed work, this existing activity-driven shop floor concept should be lifted to the next level by increasing the involvement of the individual workers and by boosting their performance by means of gamification. While classical approaches would consider evaluating worker performance on a quarterly or yearly basis based on criteria, which may be largely subjective, the proposed gamification approach will allow real-time assessment of performance and provide a transparent interface for communicating adopted performance indicators helping at transforming evaluation into an objective process. Further, gamification will allow workers to see how they are performing in terms of different criteria, how their performance compares to others and with this facilitate online corrections and the taking of real-time actions like the scheduling of learning sessions should knowledge or skill gaps be identified.