Towards human-profile based operations in advanced factory governance systems: contemporary challenges for socio-technical systems design?

This paper is about the requirements for an advanced factory governance system. Five capital assets are distinguished: Natural. artificial, human, social, and financial. A factory's operations involve and affect thcse fivc capital assets. To scopc workers' activities with respcct to objectives that exist for these capital asscts, this paper applies insights from Manufacturing System Design Decomposition. It is argued that in an advanccd factory govcrnance system the workers do also engage in govcrnance and management activities. We introduce the decision-object hierarchies and an extended generic activity model and explain how human profiles are derived from these. Sociotechnical systems design can be used in such a system to balance 'control by the system', and 'self-control' by the workers involved.