Workpackage 4 - Human, organizational & societal challenges

The high points of technological transitions (and the transition to the factory of the future is one) cannot be reduced to this single dimension, however disruptive it may be. The components of innovation are also human, social and organisational and they are never free of resistance, difficulties and renewals. This is the major challenge of the workpackage: to analyse and accompany the continuities, changes and disruptions at work in the deployment of the factories of the future, by moving from a technocentric vision to an anthropotechnical vision, and by thinking about the place of the human being at different scales:

• Micro - New activity situations: new forms of collaboration; risks and vulnerabilities;
• Meso - Organisations and work: economic and strategic trajectories of industrial companies; information system, data and decision; actors and stakeholders of the factory of the future; transformation of work and standards;
• Macro - Role of the imaginary, utopias and controversies around technologies in the development and support of the factory of the future.

It is therefore a question of analysing the real effects of the changes on humans in their various activities, at different scales and from different points of view (worker, consumer, decision-maker, etc.). This also implies, on the one hand, identifying, and even anticipating, the ruptures and transitions that can be identified today and that are likely to evolve over time; on the other hand, fully participating in the development of the factory of the future within as part of a co-design of truly anthropotechnical devices.

The implementation of these multi-scale objectives is based on a double interdisciplinary approach: on the one hand, within this workpackage, representing mainly social sciences and humanities disciplines (information and communication sciences, economics, work psychology, cognitics, ergonomics, law); on the other hand, in relation with the disciplines mobilised in the other workpackages of BEST.

Priority topics and actions

• Imaginaries and utopias around the factory of the future
• Data, information, decision
• Work, risks and governance

 Examples of other topics and actions of interest

• Strategic trajectories of industrial companies
• Collaborations between humans and machines