User-Centred Design of a Process-Recommender System for Fibre-Reinforced Polymer Production

Today’sproductionismassivelyinfluencedbyfundamentaldigitalisa- tion. IoP as the industrial realisation of the IoT idea is mainly based on the further processing and analysis of the accruing data volumes, e.g. sensor data, as well as the direct connection of integrated technical and human entities. For the techni- cal implementation, this means that suitable infrastructures and concepts must be created that add value from the generated data. Furthermore, the integration of human operators, from the shop floor to the management level, is a central challenge in the implementation of the IoP vision. Possible integration measures could be so-called recommender systems (RSS), which can offer a human operator data-based decision support in target situations. It is necessary to design and implement RSS according to the human operator’s needs and capabilities to generate a real added value. In this paper, we present a design process for a support system in textile process planning. Corresponding evaluation results are shown and reflected regarding their added value. Results show that the chosen user-centred design approach is suitable for the design of recommender systems for process planning of textile production chains, as it highlights usability conflicts early and helps identify additional feature requests. The expert evaluations run in this study revealed that the designed app concept could contribute to easier and better planning, especially in the area of fibre-reinforced polymer production.