Determination of cognitive assistance functions for manual assembly systems

Since a growing number of variants increase complexity in today's production systems, higher flexibility is needed. However, automated production systems are often not economical in high-variant production scenarios. Therefore, human flexibility plays an important role, especially for assembly tasks. In order to increase human flexibility in manual assembly a variety of assistance systems providing cognitive support for individual workers has been developed in recent years. Cognitive assistance systems can support assembly workers by providing, processing or collecting information. This paper presents an approach to determine cognitive assistance functions in manual assembly. The need for different assistance functions is investigated in order to make a needs-based selection. The results can then be matched with suitable technologies to design an assistance system. An application of this approach is shown for a manual assembly system in the learning factory for cyber-physical production systems in Augsburg, Germany.