Evaluating Worker's Proficiency from Body and Eye Movements in Manufacturing Operations

Productivity improvements in manufacturing industries are strongly sought after while considering the reduced labor power in developed countries. In response to these needs, a quantified evaluation method of worker's proficiency is key to realizing sophisticated skill developments. In previous studies, worker's proficiency in manufacturing operations was evaluated by the number of products produced per unit time or takt time. Therefore, it is difficult to understand how workers accomplish the manufacturing operations and/or tasks with specific motions and objects derived from the hand, body, and eye movements. To overcome this limitation, we investigated the quantified degree of worker's skills in four elemental processes using methods to evaluate the sophistication level between sensory and motor connectivity in the human brain's information processing. To realize these methods, we conducted a three-month experiment and measured eye and body movements of 20 participants working on a manufacturing line. Our method defines the four elemental processes to show the differences in the degree of worker's proficiency between experts and novices. The quantified evaluation results indicated that expert workers had higher proficiency levels for every elemental process compared with novice workers. These results show the possibility that novices are not as proficient as experts when memorizing correct procedures as they are more likely to discriminate a specific point to accomplish tasks due to immature memory functions within the brain.