Should I Try Turning It Off and On Again?

The flexible production and process designs of complex and automated manufacturing systems – called Cyber-Physical Production Systems (CPPS) – lead to enormous challenges for the machine operator with regard to understanding their “behavior” and therefore their technical controllability. One way to face these challenges is to foster the operator's appropriation of highly complex hardware-centered ICT-systems. Based on the historical development of CPPS and a short excursion into a study about the appropriation of 3D printers, the authors will adapt the concept of sociable technologies, as hardware-centered appropriation infrastructures, to CPPS.