Work in Arc‐Welding Stations with High Technical Complexity
A case study including the investigation and results from one plant is presented. The main aim of the current project is to test and recommend technical and organisational solutions, so that companies with highly automated production can meet the psycho‐social criteria which characterise a satisfactory workplace and at the same time attain productivity and quality goals. This is especially the case when flexibility in production is of high priority. The possibilities of achieving changes increase and at the same time the technical content will be more complex.
Industrial applications and systems still lack in adopting the Web Services architecture. Legacy systems, either OPC-based or proprietary ones, compose a huge source of data, which can be migrated and integrated into enterprise-level information systems. Within the context of prevailing and emerging technologies, such as HTTP, XML, SOAP, OPC and Web-enabled application servers, we propose an architecture that allows for the integration of existing stand-alone industrial automation systems into Web-based distributed environments, forming the base for the provision of large-scale e-services by a multitude of service providers to industrial-type clients.