ProGlove, the company behind an ergonomic barcode scanner, has developed new tools for analyzing human processes to build a human digital twin.

“We have always been driven to have our devices narrate the story of what is really happening on the shop floor, so we added process analytics capabilities that allow for time-motion studies, visualization of the shop floor, and more,” ProGlove CEO Andreas Koenig told VentureBeat.

The company’s newest process analytics tools can complement the typical top-down perspective of applications by adding a process-as-seen view to the conventional process-as-wanted view. Most importantly, it can also provide insights that improve well-being.

Koenig said, “We are building an ecosystem that empowers the human worker to make their businesses stronger.”

Above: ProGlove CEO Andreas Koenig

Image Credit: ProGlove

The market for barcode scanning is still going strong and is often taken for granted, given how old it is. “You have technologies like RFID that have been celebrated for being the next big thing, and yet their impact thus far hasn’t been anywhere near where most pundits expected it,” Koenig said.

Companies like Zebra, Honeywell, and Datalogic have lasted for decades by building out an ecosystem of tools to address industry needs. “What sets us apart is that we looked beyond the obvious and started with the human worker in mind,” Koenig said.

Not only is the company providing a form factor designed to meet requirements for rugged tools, this shift to analytics could further promote efficiency, quality, and ergonomics on the shop floor.

How a human digital twin works

ProGlove’s cofounders participated in Intel’s Make It Wearable Challenge, with the idea of designing a smart glove for industries. Today, ProGlove’s MARK scanner can collect six-axis motion data, including pitch, yaw, roll, and acceleration, along with timestamps, a step count, and camera data (such as barcode reading speed and the scanner ID).

Koenig’s vision goes beyond selling a product to establish the right balance between businesses’ need for profits and their obligation to ensure worker well-being. Koenig estimates that human hands deliver 70% of added value in factories and on warehouse floors. “There is no doubt that they are your most valuable resource that needs protection. Even more so since we are way more likely to experience a shortage of human workers in the warehouses across the world than having them replaced by robots, automation, or AI.”

ProGlove Insight contextualizes the collected data and lets users compare workstations and measure the workload and effort necessary to complete the tasks. Users can also visualize their shop floor, look at heatmaps, and identify best practices or efficiency blockers. After a recent smart factory lab experiment with users, DPD and Asics realized efficiency gains by as much as 20%, Koenig said.

ProGlove’s vision of the human digital twin is built on three pillars: a digital representation of onsite workers, a visualization of the shop floor, and an industrial process engineer. “The human digital twin is all about striking the right balance between businesses’ needs for profitability, efficiency, and worker well-being,” Koenig said. At the same time, it is important that the human digital twin complies with data privacy regulations and provides transparency to frontline workers around what data is being transmitted.