Transfactory: Towards a New Technology-Human Manufacturing Co-evolution Framework

The evolution of work organizational models and of technology poses an unprecedented set of challenges and opportunities for ensuring workers’ well-being. After an overview of the evolution of these two aspects and the role of humans with their respect, we will frame the current and near-future developments according to the job demands-resources model, where humans’ well-being depends on the good balance between job demands (workload, stress, risks, etc.) and job resources, both personal (resilience, optimism, etc.) and job-related (organizational and technological support). Adaptive automation and artificial intelligence have the potential to become job resources rather than job demands, but only if a proper design is set. Central to the design is the notion of plasticity, i.e., the capacity of an element to adapt to changes in its coupling with interacting elements. We will discuss two forms of plasticity in the relationship between humans and technology. Short-term plasticity is mainly based on the immediate adaptation of technology to human needs and performance. The long-term plasticity is based on the co-evolution of humans and technology, where changes concern not just the mere performance, but wider and long-lasting aspects like knowledge, culture, identities, approaches, job frameworks. Organization is crucial to foster this kind of co-evolution, towards a new framework, called transfactory, where human needs and values govern the overall systems evolution.