Production Floor Research Articles

Making Cognitive Ergonomics in the Human–Computer Interaction of Manufacturing Execution Systems Assessable: Experimental and Validation Approaches to Closing Research Gaps

Cognitive ergonomics and the mental health of production workers have attracted increasing interest in industrial companies. However, there is still not much research available as it is regarding physical ergonomics and muscular load. This paper designs an experiment to analyze the cognitive ergonomics and mental stress of shop floor production workers interacting with different user interfaces of a Manufacturing Execution System (MES) that is adjustable for analyzing the influence of other assistive systems, too. This approach is going to be designed with the Design of Experiments (DoE) method. Therefore, the respective goals and factors are going to be determined. The environment will be the laboratories of the University of Applied Sciences Amberg-Weiden and its Campus for Digitalization in Amberg. In detail, there will be a sample assembly process from the automotive supplier industry for demonstration purposes. At this laboratory, the MES software from the European benchmark SAP is installed, and the respective standard Production Operator Desk is going to be used with slight adaptions. In order to make the cognitive ergonomics measurable, different approaches are going to be used. For instance, body temperature, heart rate and skin conductance as well as subjective methods of self-assessment are planned. The result of this paper is a ready-to-run experiment with sample data for each classification of participants. Further, possible limitations and adjustments are going to be discussed. Finally, an approach to validating the expected results is going to be shown and future intentions are going to be discussed.

Applying Lean Principles to Eliminate Project Waste, Maximize Value, Cut Superfluous Steps, Reduce Rework and Focus on Customer Centricity

With increasingly complex demands, dynamic environments, and rapid technology changes defining business landscapes, project management methodologies are prime for disruption. Traditional project models – characterized by rigid, sequential stage-gates and siloed functional groups – struggle with wastefulness, reactive mindsets, and misalignment to customer purpose. As such, practitioners are turning to lean philosophies pioneered in manufacturing but applicable across sectors. This paper examines deploying lean principles to project environments to eliminate activities that do not directly add customer value (waste), amplify learning, decide slowly but deliver quickly, empower teams, and continuously improve. Core facets of lean covered include Value Stream Mapping to visualize workflow and identify waste; Kanban systems to limit work-in-progress, facilitate pull-based work authorization, and surface bottlenecks; Root Cause Analysis to get to the heart of problems; 5S activities for well-organized, mistake-proof workstations; and Kaizen events for rapid iterations. As illustrated through integrated case studies, these tools and mindsets facilitate lean’s primary aim within projects – determining what matters for the end-customer and optimizing all activities to directly serve this purpose. Tactics covered include defining value from the beneficiary standpoint early on, focusing on enhancing workflow from end-to-end rather than functional silos, and instilling learning and improvement mechanisms at all levels – from C-suite leadership to ground floor production. The paper closes by delineating a gradual implementation methodology – factoring in change management challenges – as well as outlining skills development required for staff to transition toward cross-functional, accountable, lean-oriented teams. While specifics vary across industries and project types, overarching insights suggest the principles represent the future of project delivery – cutting waste-related costs by upwards of 30%, accelerating timelines by over a third, minimizing scrap/rework to near-zero levels, and serving customer goals substantially better. For leaders to position projects and organizations for increasing marketplace complexity, leanness is pivotal.

Minimalisasi Defect Produk Granite Tile Pada Proses Sorting & Polishing Dengan Pendekatan Root Cause Analysis (RCA) (Studi Kasus di PT. Niro Ceramic Nasional Indonesia, Bogor–Jawa Barat )

Competition in the industry makes manufacturing companies do continuous improvement of production in order to achieve good quality. PT. XYZ is a company engaged in the manufacturing industries that produce granite tile. The problems that often arise on the production floor, especially in the process of sorting and polishing that is, the high defect products produced in the process. The purpose of this study is to minimize damage to the product on the S & P, Useful and finished product quality improvement plans. To support solving this problem, researchers used a method approach Root Cause Analysis (RCA). In the histogram obtained from the check sheets, Pareto diagrams visible damage in the S & P damage type of disability the most dominant is the Crack (57%), followed Thick (18%), Glaze Drop (11%), Black Coring (8%), and the last is the Scraper Defect (6%). From the research, a result that most of the damage is Crack. Factors causing these defects are the factors that cause deviations quality raw materials such factors, factors working methods irregularities in the implementation of the work, a factor that is less engine preventive maintenance, factor of fewer operators do not obey the standard factory operations. From the productivity results in the S & P, generate some suggestion in terms of minimizing the product is defective is implementing kaizen. Keywords: Root Cause Analysis (RCA), Application of Process Improvement, Kaizen, 5S, Granite Tile.

Facility layout planning through the ALDEP Method in the wooden cable reels industry

Facility layout planning plays a pivotal role in manufacturing system design, impacting vital metrics such as lead time, handling costs, and space optimization. While a significant portion of research has been invested in refining existing facility layouts, there is a noticeable research gap in devising optimized layouts for new establishments, especially in the value-added wood products domain. Addressing this lacuna, this research focused on designing an efficient department-level layout for a wooden cable drums manufacturing facility in an area of 4150 m2. This facility included both office and production areas. The investigative process was segmented into four distinct phases: Deciding the strategic positioning of the facility on the available plot, defining the functional and spatial requirements for each department, establishing the intricate relationship dynamics between these individual units, and rigorously documenting the most optimal department-level facility layout. For precision in layout creation, the ALDEP algorithm was employed, which was further visualized to offer a comprehensive three-dimensional representation. The final layout seamlessly organized seven departments within the 1st Floor Office Area, eight in the 2nd Floor Office Area, and thirteen within the Production Floor. Efficiency evaluation of these areas yielded scores of -811, 184, and -318, respectively. Conclusively, this research furnished actionable insights for manufacturers within the wood products sector and was expected to be an invaluable reference for academics delving into facility planning and value-added wood products manufacturing.

INTEGRATION OF TAGUCHI AND PROMETHEE FOR CNC MILLING MACHINING PARAMETER OPTIMIZATION ON AA6061

In the manufacturing industry, machining has developed quite rapidly from the use of conventional machines to unconventional machines. Unconventional machines that are often used today are optimize computer numerically controlled (CNC), the use of CNC in the manufacturing industry provides many benefits in product quality and productivity. One of them is CNC milling, this type is one of the main machines on the production floor. Machining optimization becomes the main goal to achieve the ideal response in order to produce products with good and consistent quality and productivity. Surface quality leads to surface roughness, while productivity leads to material removal rate. This study aims to optimize CNC milling machining parameters on AA6061 with Taguchi experimental design and preference ranking organization method for enrichment evaluation (PROMETHEE) method. Machining was controlled using wet machining conditions to maintain temperature during machining. Experiments were conducted nine times with three factors and levels. These factors included spindle speed, feed rate, and depth of cut. The result of this research is the ideal value of the combination of surface roughness and material burning rate which is 0.565 (experiment 3). This best experiment is influenced by spindle speed 2600 rpm, feed rate 65 mm/min, and depth of cut 2.5 mm. Feed rate has the largest contribution in influencing the response which is 43.23%, followed by depth of cut 25.24%, and spindle speed 15.91%.

Exploratory approaches for improved cost effectiveness and profitability: Utilizing mathematical analysis and value stream mapping on production floors

This paper focuses on the application of Value Stream Mapping (VSM) within the context of the electronics manufacturing industry, aiming to improve its operational efficiency and financial performance. The study thoroughly analyzes costs, integrating VSM to justify economic benefits. Data was collected directly from the manufacturing floor to create a current state map, enabling the identification of non-value-added activities and sources of waste. Areas for potential improvement were pinpointed to reduce or eliminate these inefficiencies. By implementing these proposed enhancements, the paper outlines a future state map for the electronics manufacturing process and presents the results of applying Value Stream Mapping. Comparing the current and future state maps, the study reveals that embracing Lean principles, in conjunction with Value Stream Mapping, can significantly benefit the electronics manufacturing industry. Specifically, it can reduce production lead times by 67.84% and decrease costs by 8.69%. This research underscores the financial implications of adopting Value Stream Mapping, illustrating that by combining Lean principles with VSM, industries can offer rapid customer responses at lower costs, a crucial factor for improving competitive performance in the existing market landscape.

Real-time Noise Risk Assessment as Preventive Action to Occupational Disease in A Pharmaceutical Industry

Noise is a form of dangerous exposure that occurs around humans because of sound sources from industrial machines, work equipment, alarms, transportation equipment, etc. Continuous exposure to noise with noise levels higher than 85 dBA can lead to psychological and psychological health problems. The aim of this research is to identify the intensity of noise in the pharmaceutical industry and to map the noise to humans. Noise evaluation began by conducting a survey of conditions on the production floor by arranging a production floor layout accompanied by the location of machines and other work facilities. The next step was to determine the size and number of networks that would help in identifying interference measurement points. It took around 100 points to identify interference and then measurements were carried out using a noise meter with 6 repetitions per point. The equivalent continuous sound pressure level (Leq) was calculated first before being used as input to the Surfer software to obtain interference on the production floor. The research results showed that there were 100 points spread across 12 workstations in this drug manufacturing industry. The results showed that there were 19 points that received interference ≥ 85 dBA. The areas with the biggest disturbances were the EPM machine area, spooling machine, and slitting room.

Analysis of Health and Safety in The Production Floor of CV. XYZ Using Job Safety Analysis Method and the Hazard Identification Risk Assesment and Risk Control Approach

Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) is a critical factor in the smooth operation of a company, involving machinery, tools, the work environment, raw materials and their processing, as well as the employees themselves. The company's issues regarding OHS culture and the inadequate use of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) can lead to the risk of workplace accidents when employees perform their tasks. This research utilizes the Job Safety Analysis (JSA) method, which plays a role in risk identification, and the Hazard Identification, Risk Assessment, and Risk Control (HIRARC) approach to determine the direction for the implementation of risk management and OHS in the company. This study focuses on the production process of CV. XYZ, with 35 employees. Primary data were obtained through direct observation and interviews, which were then analyzed based on potential hazards discovered. The hazard identification results in the production floor revealed a total of 71 hazards, which include 23 potential hazards in the casting process, 26 potential hazards in the machining process, and 22 potential hazards in the finishing process. Based on these potential hazards, they can be classified into risk categories, including 27 (38%) potential hazards categorized as low risk, 30 (42%) potential hazards categorized as moderate risk, and 4 (6%) potential hazards categorized as high risk. Risk control measures include elimination, substitution, technical controls, administrative controls, and the use of PPE.

A messaging library for distributed modeling

The ongoing digital transformation of industry is most clearly reflected in the increasing collection and analysis of data from various sources. Among these are sensor equipped machinery, telemetry in logistics or audiovisually monitored production floors. In order to utilize the data, e. g., to predict machinery malfunctions, its technically smooth consolidation is crucial. Therefore, numerous data interchange formats, protocols and middleware emerged over the past years. However, until today there is no gold standard technology stack for industrial data analysis, for multiple reasons, including the applications’ heterogeneity.In this work, we present a software library which aims at decoupling messaging protocols and patterns from their implementation to overcome incompatibilities and, thus, facilitate data consolidation for software engineers. Moreover, we show how to use the library for rapidly modeling distributed cyber-physical systems using an integrated schema generation mechanism. Based on one real-world and one synthetic use case, we evaluate the library's applicability, discuss open issues and outline planned features.

Productivity Analysis on Liquid Nitrogen (LIN) and Liquid Oxygen (LOX) Production Using Objective Matrix (OMAX) Method

The amount of liquid nitrogen (LIN) and liquid oxygen (LOX) production capacity experienced significant fluctuations, so it took several months before it reached the production target implemented by the company. It is necessary to measure productivity on the production floor. This study aims to determine the level of productivity of the production section, and the results of this measurement can be used to evaluate the company's productivity level. Productivity measurement using the Objective Matrix (OMAX) method. The criteria used in this study are material productivity, energy productivity, labor productivity, and finished product productivity. The highest productivity values achieved during measurements from January to December were 900 in LIN production in July and 790 in LOX production in January. Factors that cause low productivity are workers who are less careful or negligent in handling machine damage, the absence of a quality control system in checking raw materials before being placed in the storage warehouse, the lack of a shut-off valve between pipes, causing free air to enter, causing products to be rejected and also machines that work continuously for 24 hours.

ANALISIS RISIKO BAHAYA PADA STASIUN LOADING RAMP DAN PEREBUSAN PADA INDUSTRI PENGOLAHAN KELAPA SAWIT DENGAN METODE JOB SAFETY ANALYSIS (JSA)

The oil palm plantation industry in Southeast Asia, including PT. Kelapa Sawit plays an important economic role by creating jobs for thousands of people. This research employs the Job Safety Analysis (JSA) approach to recognize potential incidents and suggest the use of suitable personal protective gear (PPE/APD). Accidents on the production floor, such as falls, pinches, or contact with hazardous materials, pose a serious threat to employee safety. In order to achieve this goal, oil palm plantation companies need to continuously improve awareness of K3, identify existing risks, involve workers in safety improvements, and provide the necessary training and support

Applied Research on Electronic Documentation and 3D Product Model Deployment in Production and Assembly Processes

The three-dimensional (3D) product model has become a tool that has transitioned from a legacy instrument, used in design, to an emerging technology applied to production and assembly processes. As this evolution has occurred, the need has developed to understand the value of deploying the 3D product model beyond the design phase. This research answers the question and solves the problem, does electronic documentation inclusive of the 3D product model add to the production workers’ ability to complete the production task? To answer this question, the methods used were that the research team tested how accurately and quickly a production and assembly team could build the product using interactive, electronic documentation, including the 3D product model, as a means to understand the design intent as opposed to printed bills of materials (BOMs) and two-dimensional (2D) paper drawings. The conclusions that can be drawn from this research are that the research found statistically significant improvements in the production throughput time (~10%), reductions in the direct labor hours per unit (~14%), and retained quality levels, when deploying electronic documentation, including the 3D product model, into the production and assembly processes. Through the deployment of the interactive 3D product model electronic documentation to the production floor, the organization also took a step towards creating a digital twin of the produced product and laid a foundation for the further adoption of Industry 4.0 practices. The novelty of the work and the areas where it goes beyond previous efforts in the literature concerns the current body of knowledge that does not demonstrate a repeatable methodology through which industry and other researchers can replicate the experiment on demonstrating economic value when deploying the 3D product model to production and assembly processes. In this paper, the authors aim to build on prior work to demonstrate a repeatable methodology for determining the economic value of 3D product model deployment in production and assembly processes through applied research.

Changes in sea floor productivity are crucial to understanding the impact of climate change in temperate coastal ecosystems according to a new size-based model

The multifaceted effects of climate change on physical and biogeochemical processes are rapidly altering marine ecosystems but often are considered in isolation, leaving our understanding of interactions between these drivers of ecosystem change relatively poor. This is particularly true for shallow coastal ecosystems, which are fuelled by a combination of distinct pelagic and benthic energy pathways that may respond to climate change in fundamentally distinct ways. The fish production supported by these systems is likely to be impacted by climate change differently to those of offshore and shelf ecosystems, which have relatively simpler food webs and mostly lack benthic primary production sources. We developed a novel, multispecies size spectrum model for shallow coastal reefs, specifically designed to simulate potential interactive outcomes of changing benthic and pelagic energy inputs and temperatures and calculate the relative importance of these variables for the fish community. Our model, calibrated using field data from an extensive temperate reef monitoring program, predicts that changes in resource levels will have much stronger impacts on fish biomass and yields than changes driven by physiological responses to temperature. Under increased plankton abundance, species in all fish trophic groups were predicted to increase in biomass, average size, and yields. By contrast, changes in benthic resources produced variable responses across fish trophic groups. Increased benthic resources led to increasing benthivorous and piscivorous fish biomasses, yields, and mean body sizes, but biomass decreases among herbivore and planktivore species. When resource changes were combined with warming seas, physiological responses generally decreased species’ biomass and yields. Our results suggest that understanding changes in benthic production and its implications for coastal fisheries should be a priority research area. Our modified size spectrum model provides a framework for further study of benthic and pelagic energy pathways that can be easily adapted to other ecosystems.

Evaluation of Workers’ Working Postures based on RULA and MCDM: An Application to a SME Producing Kitchenware in Indonesia

Currently, it is obvious that occupational health and safety culture in companies is on the rise including a focus on workers’ working postures. However, the implementation of these initiatives tends to be notably deficient, particularly in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This research aims to introduce a framework for evaluating workers’ working postures taking into account ergonomic factors and other influential factors. In this study, the developed evaluation model was applied to an SME producing kitchenware situated in Indonesia using rapid upper limb assessment (RULA), and the method was combined with multi criteria decision-making (MCDM). There were five criteria identified, namely RULA score (C1), the activity’s level of importance (C2), duration (C3), work station environmental condition (C4), and supportive equipment (C5). These five criteria were considered to evaluate five working postures on the production floor. The result indicated that based on the RULA score, five postures were categorized as high risk. Besides, by considering the criteria, working posture in assembly activity (posture 3) has the highest risk level which requires immediate corrective action. This research is applicable as the evaluation of work posture is assessed by considering ergonomic factors and the level of importance for each activity.

Minimasi Pemborosan pada Lantai Produksi PT Kunango Jantan dengan Pendekatan Lean Manufacturing

PT Kunango Jantan is one of the private companies engaged in manufacturing and trading. One of the products produced is Street Light Pole (PJU). The production of these PJU poles also faces various challenges. Commonly faced challenges are related to several types of waste on the production floor. This research aims to identify waste on the production floor of PJU poles using a lean manufacturing approach. The results indicate that the top three waste percentages are 18.9% for transportation activities, 17.62% for waiting activities, and 15.46% for defects. Some factors causing these wastages include frequent machine breakdowns, depletion of raw materials due to the lack of raw material scheduling implementation, and frequent transportation during production. Improvement recommendations to reduce waste include scheduling machine maintenance, planning raw material control, and adjusting machine layouts to minimize repetitive transportation.

An integrated framework for improving safety, quality, and stewardship standards in manufacturing: A case study

Health and safety, quality assurance, and stewardship control, when integrated together, can streamline systems and work processes, reduce bureaucracy and increase efficiency. In this study, efficiency increase refers to improving and maintaining high standards of demarcation, housekeeping, no blocked safety equipment, tools storage conditions, good manufacturing practices and chemical storage conditions. Using industrial engineering tools, Plan-Do-Check-Act and Kaizen, the study illustrates a quick turnaround in standards improvement in a manufacturing plant, which resulted in culture change and increasing profitability. The manufacturing plant studied had below average standards that created health and safety hazards leading to incidents, created a risk of quality and stewardship systems failure. Incidents varied from minor to serious. With improved standards, the plant avoided and eliminated health amd safety, quality, and stewardship risks in critical areas such as production or operations floor, warehouse, laboratory, storeroom, utilities area, and workshop. This was achieved through the integration of health and safety, quality assurance and stewardship controls as one safety, quality, and stewardship (SQS) framework. The three are denoted as fundamentals and core foundation systems in a manufacturing environment in this study. An SQS tool was developed, tested, and implemented and results are shared. Implementation of the tool resulted in improvement of overall manufacturing plant standards, elimination of safety hazards, reduction of quality defects and scrap, eradication of internal controls issues, and business success. The study will be of great value for manufacturing plants who are looking to integrate more than two management systems.

Impact of Production Floor Temperature on Weaving: A Case Study of Bangladesh

Impact of Production Floor Temperature on Weaving: A Case Study of Bangladesh

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SAFETY CULTURE AND THE SAFETY CLIMATE, SAFETY BEHAVIOR AND SAFETY MANAGEMENT

This article aims to measure the application of occupational safety and health using Cooper's Reciprocal Safety Culture Model and Confirmatory Factor Analysis method. The objective function of this article is to find out the aspects of safety culture that have been implemented by companies. A questionnaire was circulated to staff on the company's production floor as part of this study. The results of the questionnaire recapitulation were then analyzed using the confirmatory factor analysis method. Based on the score calculation results and the category determination build on the questionnaire scores on each dimension of the safety culture applied to the Steel Company, the safety climate value of 55.58 is obtained, which is on a 'quite good' scale. The safety behaviour value of 44, 89 is included on a 'quite good' scale, the safety management system value of 22.04 is on a 'poor' scale, and the safety culture value of 40.83 is on the 'quite good' scale. With these results, it is essential to make improvements to the safety culture in the company, especially in the dimensions of the safety management system, which is on the 'quite good' scale.

Human worker activity recognition in a production floor environment through deep learning

One of the aims of the 4th industrial revolution is to seamlessly connect equipment and personnel to enable a greater level of collaboration, which in turn will result in higher operational efficiency and improved decision making strategies. In this context, this work presents a deep learning based approach for automated activity recognition of two human workers who are carrying out typical manual assembly and part handling tasks in a production floor environment. A typical smartphone is employed as a wearable sensor recording acceleration in 3 directions, total acceleration, brightness, geomagnetic field strength, orientation in space and sound wave intensity and is attached to the wrist of the two workers, who subsequently perform a large number of experiments examining 5 activities of interest. For the classification of these activities, two types of neural networks are employed. Initially, the experimental signals are fed to the variational autoencoder neural network so as to extract the appropriate features and subsequently these features are added to the last layer of a long short-term memory (LSTM) time series network, which is trained to classify the 5 activities of interest. An additional goal of the present paper is the study of long-term signals (LTS), that is time series of much longer duration than those of the 5 aforementioned activities, including enough noise due to the existence of time periods corresponding to unrelated activities. Ultimately, a new methodology is proposed combining both trained neural networks mentioned above, in order to identify the desired activities within the LTS in a real time application.

Transforming tree topping waste into flooring: a study on the production and evaluation of oriented strand board finish using urban and garden residues.

Oriented strand board (OSB) has become a popular building material for residential construction, but little research has been conducted on its use as a finish floor material. The study investigated the quality and performance of OSB as an alternative to traditional engineered wood products for finish floors. Four types of OSB finish floors using a mixture of garden and urban tree toppings were produced and evaluated, along with different types and levels of resin and mat moisture content. The finish floor panels were subjected to a battery of tests, including concentrated loading, indentation, falling ball impact resistance, abrasion resistance, and surface wettability. The findings showed that urea formaldehyde resin with garden tree toppings performed best in floor surface indentation, abrasion resistance, and falling ball indentation. The phenol formaldehyde resin with garden tree toppings, on the other hand, showed less moisture absorption and swelling during surface wetting tests and better resistance to force application in the concentrated loading test. Our qualitative comparison revealed that OSB finish floor production using 100% garden tree topping strands and 12% urea formaldehyde resin, along with 14% mat moisture content, produced the best results. The study provides valuable insights into the potential use of OSB as a sustainable and cost-effective finish floor material, using waste materials from urban and garden tree toppings.