Industrial Smart Working: a socio-technical model for enabling successful implementation

Chiara Cimini; Sergio Cavalieri

doi:10.1016/j.ifacol.2022.04.244

Industrial Smart Working: a socio-technical model for enabling successful implementation

IFAC Pap OnLine. 2022;55(2):505-510. doi: 10.1016/j.ifacol.2022.04.244. Epub 2022 May 5.

Authors

Chiara Cimini¹, Sergio Cavalieri¹

Affiliation

¹ Department of Management, Information and Production Engineering, University of Bergamo, Italy.

Abstract

With the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, many companies have been pushed to re-think their traditional working models to comply with the need for social distancing. In this context, Smart Working practices have been proposed to re-arrange the workforce activities ensuring the minimization of risks as well as business continuity. Despite traditionally most of the smart working practices have been applied to white collars job profiles, the COVID-19 pandemic opened the way to the introduction of Smart Working practices also in the factory environments, introducing the concept of Industrial Smart Working (ISW). This paper aims at contributing to the development of the concept of ISW proposing a socio-technical model discussing the main enabling factors that can support the successful industrial implementation of time and space flexible working models.

Keywords: agile working; flexible work; smart working; socio-technical system; work organization.