The future shop-floor operators, demands, requirements and interpretations

Abstract The evolution of the manufacturing industry reveals continuous progress and development throughout the years. This evolution not only includes production methodologies and the production equipment, it also includes the working environment of the shop-floor operators. The demands faced by the shop-floor operators have developed from strictly controlled, simple and monotonic tasks to self-controlled team work requiring a holistic approach that aims at continuous improvements and achieving a high degree of flexibility, adaptability and initiative. This paper describes the evolution of the shop-floor operator, according to the research literature and interviews with manufacturing managers and human resources specialists. In addition, the paper presents the response of future Swedish shop-floor operators, today’s high-school students, to a description of their possible future work as shop-floor operators. The Swedish manufacturing industry competes, to a large extent, on and responds to the international market. The findings made in this paper are thus also interesting for other industries and countries acting on the international market.

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