At the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano we have a 3-year fully-funded Ph.D. grant to work on the project "Performance Management in Skill and Activity-Based Shop Floors" within the Advanced-Systems Engineering programme. The project is done in collaboration with a company and aims to investigate how to integrate environmentally sustainable processes into the field of industrial automation. Please see the attached file for a more detailed description of the project.

Applications can be submitted from 22 October to 5 November 2021, by noon local time. Further details on the application procedure and selection process can be found on the following link:

The language of the Ph.D. programme is English, and the university implements a trilingual model providing prospective students with a suitable environment to learn German and Italian. For this concrete grant, knowledge of Italian and/or German is preferred but not required.

If you have any questions you can reach us at maria.menendezblanco@unibz.it and Antonella.DeAngeli@unibz.it.

Best regards,

María Menéndez-Blanco

This interdisciplinary action-research project, which draws on psychological, IT, and engineering knowledge, aims to investigate how to integrate environmentally sustainable processes into the field of industrial automation. The case study is the GKN site in Bruneck/Brunico which is transforming its production process. The company is moving from an approach in which workers were traditionally assigned to fixed tasks into a dynamic approach in which workers will be automatically assigned to different tasks based on industrial needs and their skills. An algorithm tracks the individual's behaviour through a smartwatch that notifies the opening of a task through an interface where the user can accept or reject it. From a psychological perspective this change is dramatic and, as often documented in the literature, strong resistance factors have also been shown at GKN, even after the use of economic incentives.

The project aims to investigate how the green challenge can become a facilitating factor in the acceptance of work processes that in turn lead to more sustainable development. New algorithms could, for example, take into account the reduction of waste or energy consumption within the company. Highlighting these criteria in the interface could help support user participation. In summary, the project aims to (a) identify performance parameters; (b) develop algorithms and models for predicting human tasks and behaviours and calculating optimal actions; (c) communicate suitable actions and parameters to the worker; (d) create new communities of practice as stipulated in the call for funding.