New team mates in the warehouse: Human interactions with automated and robotized systems

Abstract

Despite all the technological progress in the arena of automated and robotized systems, humans will continue to play a significant role in the warehouse of the future, due to their distinctive skills and economic advantages for certain tasks. Although industry and engineering have mainly dealt with the design and functionalities of automated warehouses, the role of human factors and behavior is still underrepresented. However, many novel warehousing systems require human-machine interactions, leading to a growing scientific and managerial necessity to consider human factors and behavior, particularly for operational activities. This is the first study that comprehensively identifies and analyzes relevant behavioral issues of interactions between warehouse operators and machines. To do so, we develop a systematic framework that links human-machine interactions with behavioral issues and implications on system performance across all operational warehouse activities. Insights generated by interviews with warehousing experts are applied to identify the most important issues. We develop a comprehensive research agenda, consisting of a set of potential research questions associated to the identified behavioral issues. The discussion is enriched by providing theoretical and managerial insights from related domains and existing warehousing research. Ultimately, we consolidate our findings by developing overarching theoretical foundations and deriving unifying themes.