Work and Work Place Design Using Empirical Shop Floor Information and Virtual Reality Techniques

• Work place design based on traditional ergonomic science has, to a large extent, been delimited by information collected from studies of individual human beings. This research approach has not been proven to influence industry shop floor work to an extent corresponding to what could be expected from research efforts (Winkel and Westgaard, 1995). Thus the practitioners are left to decide about the detailed work place design, neglecting scientific knowledge. The accelerating development within technical as well as social sciences, combined with the industrial development of production systems has, in fact, blurred the vision and method arsenal available for those interested in fitting the production system to the man. However, new prospects have, at the same time, been made available through expanding personal computer and Virtual Reality (VR) techniques implying untraditional analysis procedures for work and work place design as will be illustrated in this paper. The aim of this paper is to illuminate the feasibility of such a prospect using personal computer-,. video- and VR-techniques to amalgamate empirical shop floor information especially collected for design purposes with computer models of work. Two case studies, denoted case I and case II, will be shortly described from which an integration will be discussed.

Subject headings

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Maskinteknik -- Produktionsteknik, arbetsvetenskap och ergonomi (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Mechanical Engineering -- Production Engineering, Human Work Science and Ergonomics (hsv//eng)

Keyword

virtual reality

work place design

assembly of automobiles

loading of trucks

Publication and Content Type

kon (subject category)

ref (subject category)