Digitalization and automation in industry can have both positive and negative effects on social sustainability. On one hand it can be a basis for monotonous, uncreative, and even dangerous workplaces and in some cases might even result in people losing their work. On the other hand, it can be a base for ergonomically sound and inclusive work, engaging everyone in improvements. This project aims for moving the focus on positive effects for social sustainability while still staying cost efficient and effective in economic and ecologic sustainability for digitalization and automation of work instructions and training in manual operations like assembly, machine operation & setup, maintenance, and material handling. The Industry 4.0 paradigm offers radically increased opportunities for doing just that. For example, increased digitization can create efficiency improvements through shorter lead times and reduced disruptions to production. New generations of technology and software as well as information dissemination can be accelerated and the traceability of products and materials in the industrial systems can be greatly increased. Digitization also provides opportunities to increase industrial resilience to challenges coming from elsewhere, such as demographic change and climate threats. Advanced application of digitization is seen by industries and decision-makers as the most important enabler for achieving the strategic sustainability goals and Agenda2030. A crucial factor for competitiveness is the human contribution. Here too, digitalisation is radically changing the conditions. In the last 20 years, work instructions have been transformed from printed text on paper into an increasingly digital representation. As knowledge increases about how work instructions for the manufacturing industry should be designed, they are rarely designed according to user conditions. At best, this results in a missed opportunity for performance improvements and at worst, it could potentially result in quality deficiencies, efficiency deficiencies and a lower degree of inclusion of staff groups. Digitization and automation permeate both society and industry more and more and there are many different technologies on the market. These can contribute to both increased efficiency and flexibility for the industry. However, there are a lot of challenges to both implement, design, and use instructions. Studies conducted in industry 2014–2018 show that operators and assembly workers only use instructions in 20–25% of cases in the operational phase when they are perceived as inefficient (Fast-Berglund & Stahre, 2013; Mattsson et al., 2018). Of course, this also increases the risks of, for example, assembly errors by not using instructions to the extent that they should be used. The corporate culture and standards are also an important part of how instructions are created and used. Depending on the structure and condition of the company and the production unit, for example, an assembly instruction at one company may include information about the product, process, and work environment, while an assembly instruction at another company includes completely different or only parts of this information. Of course, this is a natural consequence of sometimes far-inherited corporate cultures and traditions, but experience has also shown that it is to a very large extent the nature of work that defines the type of support system needed. In line with increased automation and increasing product variation as a result of increased customisation, operators’ tasks will require more creative work than before where the aim is to enable and handle the results of individual workers' creative thoughts about improvements in their own work situation, increasing cognitive load (Taylor et al., 2020). The development of digitalisation has created new opportunities for improved communication among employees in the manufacturing industry (Oesterreich & Teuteberg, 2016). Therefore, this technological development can and should support operators cognitively (Kaasinen et al., 2020; Mattsson et al., 2016). Although many new digital technologies are being developed and are available (Romero et al., 2016), it is still difficult to implement these so that people's cognitive work is supported. This is often due to the fact that the implementation does not take place in a way that people are comfortable with (Parasuraman & Riley, 1997). In many cases, humans are expected to adapt to technology and not the other way around (Thorvald et al., 2021). To implement better support for their operators, companies should focus on identifying the information needs that exist (Haghi et al., 2018) and then visualize it in a way that is useful to operators. The central aim for the project is to demonstrate how knowledge and systematic development of cognitive support and information design can increase quality and flexibility in future production and how this can be considered in the implementation of digital work instructions. In the industrial case studies, current state-of-practice in information presentation will be investigated and analysed together with state-of-the art knowledge and technology to map successful efforts in industry, identify what it is that makes them successful, or how a particularly challenging situation can be further improved through our knowledge of cognitive work in production.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how to best learn to run a collaborative robot in a safe way through different types of vocational training. To learn how to run a collaborative robot safely has many challenges. The challenges connected to learning are: i) life-long learning and re-skilling takes time to deploy and ii) in traditional training information is forgotten. In addition, there is a lack in labour and although Industry 4.0 envisioned an operator that would be intelligent and skilled to manage complicated systems there simply is no such personnel. Therefore, vocational training should be designed to fit everyone. Three experiments were carried out: 1) how safe the operator felt and what type of theory that was preferred, 2) if and how VR could be used for safety-critical tasks and 3) how a reduced version of theory and how having a training online effected the operators experience of feeling safe. Results indicate that theory length must be adapted to the trained task, that operators feel safe due to the presence of the trainer (both IRL and virtual) and that VR could be used to learn safety-critical aspects in an efficient way. In conclusion, this article shows that safety-critical tasks could be trained through VR and that the design of the vocational training in this article is a way to ensure operator safety and the perception of being safe when working with a collaborative robot.

Purpose To support the vision of Industry 5.0 manufacturing companies must ensure human centricity, sustainability and resilience. In this article human-centricity, sustainability and resilience is supported through a vulnerability analysis performed on the emergency production of face masks. The aim was to analyse vulnerabilities/risks and find an approach applicable for critical and emergency production in the case of face mask production. Design/methodology/approach The production process, not in continuous use, was observed and analysed by operation personnel and assessment experts covering different aspects. In the vulnerability analysis energy, material, personnel, and maintenance supply of a production process for face masks was analysed. Findings Findings show that instructions and manuals as well as procedures for how to employ and train personnel need to be part of the emergency/contingency planning, it is not enough to store the equipment. New opportunities using digital and visual technologies can be utilised. Research limitations/implications The emergency production of face masks is an example of moving from Manufacturing readiness level (MRL) 6 to 10, which includes supporting the human need for instructions, looking at waste and material production as well as handling resilience through emergency preparedness Practical and Social implications This research is crucial for society since during Covid, Swedish healthcare needed temporary domestic production of personnel protective equipment. The analysis can be supplemented with social and environmental sustainability assessment. Original/value This paper contributes with enhanced practical and academic understanding of human factor importance in emergency production.