Research And Application Of Smart-fun Job Design For CNC Machine Operations

When the global manufacturing industry is facing a revolutionary turning point,the problems of high turnover rate,aging employees and recruitment shortages in China's manufacturing industry have become urgent issues that need to be addressed.The tedious work nature of manufacturing production tasks,the poor working environment and the low salary level are the main reasons causing such issues,which also lead to low job motivation and satisfaction of the frontline workers.CNC machine operation,as a typical type of manufacturing work,shares the characteristics of repetitiveness,tediousness,and low in self-determination.To address these problems,this dissertation proposes an innovative concept of “smart-fun job design”,which aims to provide intelligent and engaging work experience via advanced information technology.The management can also benefit from the improved production efficiency because of the enhanced job motivation,job satisfaction,and operational performance of employees.The main innovative results achieved in this dissertation are as follows:A new concept of “smart-fun job design” was proposed,which is defined as “an innovative job design that enhances the positive work affects and performance of employees by providing intelligent and engaging work experience via advanced information technology.Based on the traditional job design,smart-fun job design combines with the concept of user experience design,emphasizing the optimization of the working experience,without having to change the work content itself,so as to achieve the organizational goals.A model of smart-fun job design was proposed based on motivation psychology theories,which functions as the theoretical basis of smart-fun job design.The establishment of this model considers the game affordances that affect the intrinsic and extrinsic job motivation,and associates and deduces the game affordances with the corresponding section of self-determination theory,goal setting theory and job design theory.This model emphasizes the relationship between specific game affordances and their psychological and behavioral outcomes in job design,thus filling the theoretical gap of lacking the correspondence between game elements,mechanisms and psychological motivation.A framework of smart-fun job design was proposed as an effective guidance of the design process of CNC machine operations.This framework includes a preparation phase,a smart design phase,and an evaluation phase.The advantage of this framework is that it enjoys versatility for different types of job design in different industries because of starting from the core dimensions of job characteristics.A set of smart-fun information management system for CNC machine operations was developed,including CNC machine terminals,an upper monitor,cloud server and mobile client terminals.The mobile client terminal software was compiled for both the management-user port and the employee-user port,and in the development process of CNC machine tool terminal,the technical problems integrated with FANUC CNC system were successfully overcome,and the integration of production data,numerical control system and mobile terminal was realized.In the actual work process,this system can improve work motivation and production efficiency,and contribute to the accumulation of production management data.Combined with the actual production process of a screw plant and an engine cylinder head production plant,the verification experiment of smart-fun job design was carried out.The results show that smart-fun job design and the game elements in the theoretical model have significantly improved the work motivation,job satisfaction and operational performance of CNC machine operators.