A Human-Centric Environment {(HCE)} Framework for Sustainable Production in a Bakery

Employee well-being is an increasingly crucial factor for sustainability and efficiency in modern industry, especially within the context of Industry 5.0, which places humans at the center of production processes. This paper presents some work in progress towards the development of an innovative framework that aims to monitor operators’ physical stress and well-being and then optimize task assignment in an industrial bakery environment. In particular, in this paper, we concentrate on the description of the general architecture and on the modules for stress prediction and management. This is part of a more general project developed under the NRRP MUR initiative FAIR (Future AI Research): Green-aware AI. Smartwatches and environmental sensors are the main sources of time-series biometric data. This data is used to predict future stress levels through an AI-based approach. These predictions are then used to dynamically reassign or pause operators. The goal is to minimize stress and prevent overload while maintaining adherence to the production plan. Preliminary results of some experiments conducted at a real Industrial Bakery Factory over a three-month period in the production, oven, and packaging departments, demonstrated how the integration of Internet of Everything (IoE) systems and AI can improve employee health and operational efficiency.