Cognitive Factors Affecting the Manufacturing Optimization Skills of Rural Indian BPO Workers

Abstract

Crowdsourcing offers on-demand access to large numbers of human workers to implement new forms of human–computer collaborative functionalities that can be seamlessly integrated into advanced software and algorithms. However, crowdsourcing tasks are primarily undertaken by urban rather than rural workers. To enable the development of skilled rural employment, this research aims to assess rural crowdsourcing workers’ spatial reasoning and creative abilities and their abilities to solve irregular strip packing problems associated with the manufacture of sheet materials. The study conducted experiments and data collection with 140 rural Business Processing Outsourcing (BPO) workers located in six states of India. The statistical analyses of the data collected from seven rural BPO firms (140 rural workers) reveal that rural workers can achieve a 2D packing efficiency that is up to 8% higher than that of commercial algorithm outcomes. The results suggest that rural crowdsourcing can lead to effective job creation, skill development, and, for a modest cost, it can support industries that employ CAD/CAM systems to generate geometric data for common manufacturing processes.