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CONTROLLO tecnica 94 Novembre - Dicembre 2021 n Automazione e Strumentazione Continuous improvement is a well-known term in most industrial companies. In very short terms it consists in analyzing actual performances and determining what actions to implement for their improvement. Data acquisition/entry represents a critical issue of the analysis. A walk in the shopfloor is sometimes sufficient to acquire all the needed data but more often sensors, cameras and trained tech- nicians or engineers are required, thus highlighting efficiency problems. Time and motion studies Engineers have been studying work methods starting from the Second Industrial Revolution. Objective of such studies, that consider time as a key measure, is to maximize both productivity and efficiency through the elimination of wastes, including those affecting work- ers’ health and safety. There are currently two main approaches: (1) Direct observation , where stopwatches or video recordings are used to sample the tasks of interest. (2) Standard tables . Decades of studies have produced several MTM (Methods Time Measurement) tables (e.g. MTM – UAS, MTM – 1, etc.) where stan- NOTA AUTORE G. Pianigiani, Industry 4.0 junior consultant, Erre Quadro S.r.l. A WEARABLE-DEVICE-BASED SYSTEM FOR THE AUTOMATIC SAMPLING OF MANUAL OPERATIONS Time and Motion measures in the era of IoT Continuous improvement needs to be fed by constant sampling of actual performances. When it comes to manual activities the common monitoring techniques present limitations in terms of scalability, invasiveness, and data objectivity. The presented solution aims to overcome these limitations, introducing an automatic and flexible IoT system for the collection and analysis of non-ambiguous data from the operations. Giovanni Pianigiani Figure 1 - Bracelet used in the analyses. The device is equipped with a 125 kHz RFID reader and a microcontroller for primary data manipulations