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Ch57-I044963.fm  Page 281  Tuesday, August 1, 2006  4:10 PM
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                          TOWARDS HUMAN-PROFILE             BASED OPERATIONS
                         IN ADVANCED FACTORY GOVERNANCE                  SYSTEMS:
                                 CONTEMPORARY          CHALLENGES FOR
                                SOCIO-TECHNICAL         SYSTEMS DESIGN?


                                      F.M. van  Eijnatten 1  and J.B.M. Goossenaerts 2
                                       1
                                         Human Performance  Management Group,
                                            2
                                              Information  Systems Group,
                              12
                                Research School for Operations Management and Logistics (BETA)
                                        Department  of Technology  Management,
                                Eindhoven University of Technology,  5600 MB Eindhoven, NL


                  ABSTRACT
                  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
                 these five  capital assets. To scope workers'  activities with respect to objectives that exist for these capi-
                 tal  assets, this paper  applies  insights  from  Manufacturing  System  Design  Decomposition.  It is  argued
                 that  in an advanced  factory  governance  system the workers  do also engage in governance  and manage-
                 ment  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.


                  KEYWORDS

                  Information  systems  design  methodology,  information  storage,  advanced  factory  governance,  capital
                  assets  management,  human-centered  manufacturing,  socio-technical  systems,  decision-objects  hierar-
                  chy, manufacturing  systems design decomposition, generic activity model, decisional reference  model.


                  INTRODUCTION

                  Socio-Technical  Systems  Design  (STSD)  is  a  dominant  human-factors  design  approach  to  develop a
                 human-centered,  technology  enabled,  team-based,  manufacturing  system  (Van Eijnatten,  1993).  STSD
                  asserts that  the  human  factor  is of vital  importance  for the  successful  functioning  of  intelligent  manu-
                                                                            th
                  facturing  systems  (Vink  et al., 2002).  STSD  was used  in the  European  Union  5  Framework  1ST pro-
                 ject  'PSIM'  (Participative  Simulation  Environment  for  Integral  Manufacturing  Enterprise  Renewal)
                 that  was  part  of the  global  Human-Machine  Coexisting  Systems  project  (HUMACS).  HUMACS  was
                  aimed  at  developing  a  'Human-Factors  Centered  Manufacturing  Enterprise'  in  which people  give  full
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