Tool use and collaborative work of dock assembly in practice

In order to deepen the understanding of the intrinsic interactions and interplay between humans, tools, and environment from a systems perspective, research in the wild (RITW) approaches have gained traction during recent decades as they provide a higher ecological validity of findings. This paper p...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Rebecca Andreasson, Jessica Lindblom, Peter Thorvald
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Taylor & Francis Group 2017-01-01
Series:Production and Manufacturing Research: An Open Access Journal
Subjects:
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21693277.2017.1374890
Description
Summary:In order to deepen the understanding of the intrinsic interactions and interplay between humans, tools, and environment from a systems perspective, research in the wild (RITW) approaches have gained traction during recent decades as they provide a higher ecological validity of findings. This paper presents a RITW study, investigating how assembly, in this case dock assembly of forwarders, was done in practice. As our theoretical foundation, we used the framework of distributed cognition, which is one of the main pillars of RITW. The findings are presented in narrative form, describing and highlighting that the workers achieve an efficient production outcome by being integral parts of the whole production process and doing so through coordination of activities benefitting the shared goal of the distributed socio-technical system.
ISSN:2169-3277