Manual Assembly Workplace Research Articles

Use of Data-Driven Simulation Modeling and Visual Computing Methods for Workplace Evaluation

In the time of Industry 4.0, the dynamic adaptation of companies to global market demands plays a key role in ensuring sustainable financial and time justification. Financial accessibility, a wide range of user-friendliness, and credible results of the visual computing methods and data-driven simulation modeling enable a higher degree of usability in small, medium, and large enterprises. This paper presents an innovative method for modelling and simulating workplaces in manufacturing based on visual data captured with a spherical camera. The presented approach uses simulation scenarios to investigate the optimization of manual or collaborative workplaces. We evaluated and compared three simulated scenarios, the results of which highlight the potential for improvement regarding manufacturing productivity and cost. In addition, ergonomic analyses of a manual assembly workplace were performed using existing evaluation metrics. The results show the possibility of creating a three-dimensional model of a workplace captured with a spherical camera, which not only describes the model dimensionally but also adds terminological and other production parameters obtained through the analysis of manufacturing system videos. The confirmation of the appropriateness of introducing collaborative workstations is also confirmed by ergonomic analyses Ovaco working analyzing system (OWAS) and rapid upper limb assessment (RULA), which demonstrate the sustainable limits of manual assembly workplaces.

Simulation-games for Learning Conducive Workplaces: A Case Study for Manual Assembly

All segments of stakeholders in society need to understand economic, environmental and social connections and implications in order to facilitate sustainable development. Currently many people - especially in emerging countries - are not aware of the challenges associated with sustainability. In addition new technology has to be developed to find solutions for providing growth without exceeding the resource boundaries of our planet. This demands a drastically increased learning and teaching productivity and thus new approaches for education. Exemplarily for engineering education, the authors present a concept in which simulation-games are applied in order to support training for assembly processes on manual workplaces. The Assembly Game and the Gaming System are introduced. The first game is played on portable devices. Learners acquire knowledge of the assembly sequence of a bicycle e-motor. The second game is played on a manual assembly workplace. It encourages practice based learning by combining gaming software with a manual assembly workplace. Both games are implemented in education oriented software with strong visual features. Motion capture technology is used in order to support the immediate response to the user's actions.

Cognitive Assistance in the Workplace

These days, customers can choose and configure nearly every detail of a product they want to buy, making each manufactured product a unique piece rather than just another part in a large-scale production. The availability of such complex built-to-order systems is introducing a more complex manufacturing process, requiring more cognitive effort compared to the traditional built-to-stock approach. The manual-assembly workplace is thus becoming a challenging environment. To help the workers better manage such environments, the authors have built an assistive system that can be integrated directly into the workplace using in-situ projection for augmented reality. This article is part of a special issue on digitally enhanced reality.

Adaptive Qualification and Assistance Modules for Manual Assembly Workplaces

Enterprises must be able to make decisions for increasing process effectiveness and efficiency in view of shrinking natural resources. A globalised work force has to be made aware of the challenges in resource scarcity and material wealth. Special attention has also to be paid on health and safety at work due to recent demographic developments. We present two solutions based on human motion capture technology which can improve efficiency while enabling ergonomic working, thus addressing challenges in sustainable manufacturing. With a qualification module, intuitive work descriptions can be generated and distributed. An assistance module automatically adjusts the workplace to enable working in a comfortable pose. First tests regarding our qualification module show the ability to implicitly convey knowledge during simple working tasks. Studies on the assistance module show its capabilities to predict what test subjects working at the workplace would consider as configuration for “comfortable” and “ergonomic” working.

Manual Assembly Workstation Redesign Based on a New Quantitative Method for Postural Comfort Evaluation

Main purpose of this work is to show how easy and economics an ergonomic/comfort based approach, in re-design a manual assembly workplace, can be; authors, using a new comfort/ergonomic evaluation criterion, analyzed a workstation and identified the critical issues under ergonomic/comfort point of view and finally gave several guidelines to re-design the workplace, implementing minor modification, and improve work-safety, work-quality and productivity. The postural analysis was performed by non-invasive and especially inexpensive methods, based on cameras and video-recorder use and by photogrammetric analysis; DELMIA® DHM software has been used to perform all simulations; comfort analysis was performed by the software developed by researchers of Departments of Industrial Engineering of Salerno: CaMAN®. The test case is an automatic assembly machine that has been modeled and used for virtual postural analysis. Main results of this work can be found in a very good numerical/experimental correlation between acquired/simulated postures and real ones, and on the powerful use of an objective comfort evaluation method, based on biomechanics and posture analysis, for giving to designers the guidelines to re-design a workplace and a work-cycle. This kind of approach seemed to be very powerful in re-designing the work-place and in re-scheduling the work time-sheet because it allowed to improve an ergonomic corrective action with minor costs for company. Obtained results demonstrated the validity of re-design hypotheses through the increase of all comfort indexes and the improvement of workstation/operator productivity.

Computer-Aided Planning of Manual Assembly Workplaces

The detailed planning of working places, in terms of adapting the work to the workers is an important step for the design of new working systems. The planner fixes during this phase both methods and conditions for the latter work, considering a lot of ergonomical, technical and organisational aspects, as well as restrictions of the particular problem. In the past this resulted in solutions being totally dependent on the qualification and the experience of the planner. Obviously the chance for getting relatively bad designed working places is increasing with the number of planning tasks to be performed concurrently. To ease the problems described above, our Institute has developed a computer aided program for the design of manual assembly places. It enables the planner to perform all the essential tasks, needed for the design of working places. Due to the computer aid, the planner gets relief from repetitive tasks, leaving more time for the increasing number of creative tasks.