The Worker Feedback Dashboard app has been developed by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and the European Factory2Fit research consortium, which is developing solutions to adapt working environments in the manufacturing industry to the individual skills, needs and preferences of the workers.
The app is currently being tested by workers at the Stera Oy sheet metal plant in Forssa, Finland.
It has been integrated into the highly automated Prima Power sheet metal working lines manufactured by Finn-Power.
It then combines operational data from the automation line and wellbeing information from Fitbits worn by the workers to give a more rounded picture of how the employee is doing.
Only the employee has access to this data and after each shift, the app shows them a graph about how it went and gives them information about their own wellbeing.
It helps operators recall if something special happened during the shift.
According to the developers, it could also be used to analyse how they coped in an error situation and to reflect if they could do something differently in the future.
In the long term, the developers hope the application may help people find the personal style and way of working that suits them the best.
Workers wear trackers on their wrists to collect information (Photos: VTT, Päivi Heikkilä)
The operators at Stera have been piloting the Worker Feedback Dashboard for over a month now. The operators participating in the pilot have reported that seeing the utilisation rate of the machine after their work shift has been a good motivator.
“Once we can increase people’s job satisfaction, the work efficiency will also improve,” said Stera’s Business Unit Manager, Tero Marjamäki.
“This application provides feedback to employees only, and that is the way it should be. In the future, we should have a third party involved, providing the employer with compiled and filtered feedback, which would help us identify problem areas and things that need changes.”
Eija Kaasinen from VTT, the coordinator of the Factory2Fit project, added: “In the working life of the future, employees will increasingly take responsibility for their competence and for its development.
“The Worker Feedback Dashboard application developed in the Factory2Fit project supports this development by providing positive feedback and helping employees recognise their own strengths and areas in need of development. Monitoring of wellbeing at work and work performance supports individual on-the-job learning at a rate that suits the person in question.”
