INDUSTRIAL CHALLENGES IN HUMAN-CENTRED PRODUCTION Dr. Wolfgang Unzeitig 1 , Martin Wifling 1 , Dr. Alexander Stocker 1 , Manfred Rosenberger 1 1 VIRTUAL VEHICLE Research Center Inffeldgasse 21/A, 8010 Graz, Austria Abstract On the way to future Smart Factories the role of people in production plants is becoming increasingly important too. Supporting production workers through providing them with action relevant data, information and knowledge via modern information technology has become a central topic of research. Against this background, a Horizon 2020 project has been launched exploring the future role of the production worker in Smart Factories. This paper outlines the four industry challenges of the FACTS4WORKER project, personalized augmented operators, worker-centric knowledge management systems, self-learning manufacturing workplaces and in-situ mobile learning in the production. These four challenges provide the required research framework for developing a smart factory solution consisting of technology building blocks which are combined in a smart way to empower the worker for flexible production. Keywords: Smart Factory, human-centred production, production workers, flexible production 1. INTRODUCTION AND MOTIVATION “Factories of the Future” is a commonly used wording on European level, whenever production related research is addressed. Several authors [2, 6, 8, 11, 13] assign high potential to combine the factories with a networked information and communication technology (ICT) that collects processes and presents large amounts of data. While “Smart Factories” are able to autonomously keep track of inventory, machine parameters, product quality and workforce activities, the worker will play a central role within future forms of production, especially in small and medium enterprises. Taking the current speed in user-centric technology development and adoption on the private level into account, we stand at the edge of achieving really worker-centric smart factories. It seems to be the perfect time for a human-centered revolution in factories, as both technological (Social Software, Semantic Technologies, User Profiling, Big Data, ..) and social enablers (user generated content, users add value, network effects per default, harnessing the collective intelligence, ...) have successfully emerged. Today, a technology-affine young generation acts both as producer and consumer of information and knowledge on the Web, and is capable of bringing creative and networked-thinking into production environments, too. At the same time many 50+ factory workers of today are also beneficiaries of powerful human-centred technology, which they have already adopted in their private context. In the project “FACTorieS for WORKERS” (FACTS4WORKERS) funded by the European Commission in the Call Factory of the Future (H2020-FoF-2014) human workforce in factories on all levels from shop floor to management should be strengthened in their flexibility. The project aims to increase problem-solving and innovation skills, cognitive job satisfaction and worker productivity, finally attracting more young talents to factory work. The human resource is the most skilled, flexible and productive asset of any production system. Hence, FACTS4WORKERS' idea is to support shop floor workers intelligently by all means modern ICT can offer. The research work focuses on developing a seamless and flexible IT-infrastructure with worker-centric and data-driven technology building blocks considering usability, user experience and technology acceptance. Advancement will be gained through integrating several of these building blocks into a flexible smart factory infrastructure, focusing on workers’ needs, expectations and requirements, and being supported by organizational measures and change management. In the last decade, the bulk of information and communication technology based revolutions stemmed from the World Wide Web in the private domain: