Collaborative robot arms (cobots) are gaining a strong foothold in contemporary
manufacturing workplaces. While more information about the cobot’s impact
becomes available, crucial design, work perception, performance, and strategic
implications are systematically overlooked. Following a modern sociotechnical
systems design theory (MSTS) perspective, which lies at the heart of workplace
innovation literature, we studied if, how, and why the cobot made production units
more resilient and strategically relevant. We ran a comparative case study involving
15 Dutch small- and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises (SMEs) and 36
interviewees (managers and operators). The results describe how the cobots are
designed as autonomous and rigid mini-robots, handling one or a few high-quantity
products in ways that are not inherently more reliable and efficient. Operators
interacting with the cobots experience stronger motivational work characteristics, but
the cobot’s autonomous and stable operation also provokes classic out-of-the-loop
problems. Consequently, cobot-equipped production units do not always perform
better. Nonetheless, SMEs deem their units strategically relevant since they
(indirectly) improve financial flexibility, increase production capacity, streamline
future automation projects, and accommodate the resolution of labor scarcity issues.
This research creates a pathway for more MSTS and workplace innovation research
at the crossroads of human-robot interaction, organisational design, production
management, applied psychology, and entrepreneurship. Practical implications are
provided and discussed elaborately.