3 Ways Cybernetics is impacting WCM 4.0

Figure: Relationship between cybernetics and WCM 4.0

The level of manufacturing intelligence has tremendously increased and now more than ever employees are thinking and communicating on screens as opposed to logbooks. Woe unto you if you are still putting pen on paper. The ground has shifted to the meta-verse, the modern employee has learned to boot up, activate and transmit his brain. Cybernetics is the science of general consistencies of control and data processing in man, machines and the society.

It has its origins in the analysis of correlations between the characteristics of creatures and that of electrical and mechanical systems with its main focus being the human use of human beings. It views the human operator as a feedback element and an integral part of the manufacturing system.

Cybernetics in WCM 4.0 treats manufacturing excellence as a communication and control problem and applies communication and control theoretic principles to guide manufacturing process improvement and quality assurance. It brings in an interdisciplinary science in the manufacturing organization in operations of the human being and places emphasis on how information, models and control actions can have an impact on vision attainment while mitigating or eliminating challenges.

For cybernetics, WCM 4.0 offers communication and control platforms such as; Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), cloud computing, industrial integration, big data, industrial information integration, wearables, advanced materials, quantum computing, nano-manufacturing, machine learning, artificial intelligence and other technologies.

1. Employee solutions and cybernetics

In employee solutions, cybernetics works on the human communication and control loop of learning, practicing and experiencing new habits of thinking, imagining, remembering and acting in order to; one, develop an adequate and realistic self image and two, enable employees to create a mechanism to bring success and happiness in achieving the organizations objectives.

WCM 4.0 through visual management enables employees to use creative mental picturing and in group activities it brings about creative experiences through use of imagination and formation of new automatic reaction patterns by creating scenarios for “acting out” and “acting as if”.

Though cybernetics does not state that man is a machine it is cognizant of the servomechanism-like behaviors in the nervous system in humans. There are two types of servomechanism displayed in human beings; the first is where the vision and the mission is to achieve it is known and the second one where the vision is not known and the mission is to discover and locate it. The brain and the nervous system work in both ways.

Employee solutions in WCM 4.0 takes advantage of the servomechanism in the human being by ensuring the individuals built-in success mechanism has “SMART” goals or targets to enable her steer herself to the target or discover something already in existence. WCM 4.0 facilitates collection and analysis of real time data thus heighten goal setting and achievement through buffering, feed-forward and feedback control.

2. Process lock-in and cybernetics

Cybernetics uses teleology in its processes. The success mechanism in humans comes in effortlessly once the vision is supplied to the brain. The process of achieving manufacturing excellence can only be achieved after the mental image of the success that is sought has been visualized and not before.

Mistakes and temporary failures are part of the negative feedback needed to correct the course in achieving the set goal. A mental note of errors is also recorded and how to mitigate and/or avoid them is taken into account. Skills are learnt through trial and errors. Mental correction of the focus after an error is continuous until a successful performance has been achieved.

Further learning and continuous innovation is accomplished by forgetting the past errors and keeping track of successful responses for future replication. WCM 4.0 introduces a knowledge-motivated manufacturing, communication and connectivity based on industrial sensor networks and analytics. This synergy increases the probability of success in skill learning and application.

The synergistic effect between WCM 4.0’s process lock-in and cybernetics has led to new manufacturing processes characterized by digitization and integration of manufacturing resources on cloud applications as flexible, protected and on demand services. It has also resulted in smart and interconnected things capable of real-time and autonomous decision making and analytic/cognitive capabilities through embedded electronics.

3. Equipment optimization and cybernetics

Trust in the human creative mechanism is critical for accelerating the speed towards the vision. As such elements that tend to create anxiety and an attempt to force the process through too much conscious effort only jams the system. This is because the human innovative mechanism works below the conscious level. This creative system operates efficiently when demand is put in place by actions. One must not wait to have proof, employees need act as if it is there, and it will come through.

The mechanical fluidity of the human being provides for an almost exponential expansion of her intelligence and is highly relevant in advancing manufacturing excellence. Cybernetics is alive to the fact that the structure of a machine or an organism is an index of the performance expected from it. This has resulted in mechanical advances that have mitigated or totally eliminated physical stress while electronics and IT have acted to limit human mental strain.

WCM 4.0 optimization and cybernetics has thus resulted in 3 pivotal solutions, they are; one, intelligent products which can autonomously order production resources and synchronize the manufacturing process, two, smart machines that substitute conventional manufacturing models with highly adaptable, decentralized and self-regulating networks and three the rise of the augmented employee who has technology at his disposal through wearables and hand held devices.