Human-machine-interaction in the industry 4.0 era

The development of Industry 4.0 will be accompanied by changing tasks and demands for the human in the factory. As the most flexible entity in cyber-physical production systems, workers will be faced with a large variety of jobs ranging from specification and monitoring to verification of production strategies. Through technological support it is guaranteed that workers can realize their full potential and adopt the role of strategic decision-makers and flexible problem-solvers. The use of established interaction technologies and metaphors from the consumer goods market seems to be promising. This paper demonstrates solutions for the technological assistance of workers, which implement the representation of a cyber-physical world and the therein occurring interactions in the form of intelligent user interfaces. Besides technological means, the paper points out the requirement for adequate qualification strategies, which will create the required, inter-disciplinary understanding for Industry 4.0.