Human diversity factors in production system modelling and design: state of the art and future researches

Workforce diversity effects in manufacturing systems have attracted a wide range of researches in the last years. Differences between workers in terms of age, gender, physical measures, culture and skills have a large impact on production systems performance. This study investigates workforce diversity factors in production system modeling and design in order to highlight strengths and weakness in the present published literature. The paper categorizes a selection of papers in the last ten years and discusses how human factors are incorporated into manufacturing systems optimization and design approaches. Finally, a discussion on future research steps is provided.