Högskolan i Skövde

Modern manufacturing information systems allow fast distribution of, and access to, information. One of the main purposes with an information system within manual assembly is to improve product quality, i.e. to ensure that assembly errors are as few as possible. Not only must an information system contain the right information, it must also provide it at the right time and in the right place. The paper highlights some of the concerns related to the design and use of information systems in manual assembly. The paper describes a study that focuses on the correlation between active information seeking behaviour and assembly errors. The results are founded on both quantitative and qualitative methods. The study indicates that by using simplified information carriers, with certain characteristics, the assembly personnel more easily could interpret the information, could to a higher degree be prompted (triggered) about product variants and could also be able to prepare physically and mentally for approaching products arriving along the assembly line. These conditions had positive influence on quality, i.e. gave a reduction of assembly errors.