Augmented Reality and Gamification to Increase Productivity and Job Satisfaction in the Warehouse of the Future
Stavros T. Ponis, George Plakas, K. Agalianos, Eleni Aretoulaki, Sotiris P. Gayialis, A. Andrianopoulos
Abstract
The emergence of B2C e-commerce in the last decade is currently transforming the way warehouses fulfill online orders with just a few line items, broad and variable product assortments, varying workloads and extremely short delivery schedules. In this new business reality, order picking stands out as the most labor intensive, strenuous, time constrained, repetitive, prone to error and expensive process in the contemporary warehouse. These characteristics undoubtedly put significant strain to the human worker (picker) creating both body fatigue and feelings of monotony and dissatisfaction usually leading to employee underperformance and demotivation. In this paper, we conducted a questionnaire-based survey to supervisors and pickers from different large distribution centers to evaluate the individuals' acceptance of introducing Augmented Reality (AR) in the picking process to support pickers in their everyday tasks, gamification elements as a tool for increasing their motivation and last but not least, a combination of the two approaches.