Foundry Workstation

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An ergonomic evaluation of a foundry workstation Abstract: The ergonomics aspects play a very important role in operator’s productivity. The workstation layout and work design are two important factors of ergonomics of the operators or worker efficiency. Present manufacturers found that instead of investing cost in man, machine, material, and method (4m), improvements of ergonomics of workstation is more beneficial in count of cost saving. The present study contains an analysis of a workstation in a foundry industry. The ergonomics study of the workstation is completed by using RULA and biomechanics analysis tools in CATIA V5 R19 software. A film recorded by video recorder and several photographs of workstation are used for postural analysis…show more content…
3.1 RULA Analysis RULA allows manikin's upper limbs analysis based on parameters such as distance, weight and frequency. It is used to canvas many aspects of manikin posture based on various variables and user data, such as lifting distance, lowering distance, action duration, object weight and task frequency. The RULA analysis is performed (Mohamad et al., 2013) on the manikin with an exact replication of actual worker with posture attained to assess the subject’s postural discomfort. Figure 3 shows RULA analysis window for posture 1 with a 95th percentile manikin and Table 2 and 3 present the RULA score for all the four postures for 5th and 95th percentile manikin respectively Above postural analysis using the RULA method shows that all the four postures for both 5th (Table 2) and 95th (Table 3) percentile manikin are unsafe and need to be investigated and changed immediately. 3.2 Biomechanics Analysis This ergonomic tool present in CATIA evaluates biomechanical data of a worker in a given posture. This tool computes information such as the lumbar spinal loads and the forces and moments on manikin joints. The results of this tool are based on research results and algorithms published by the scientific community. The tool takes into account forces or loads coming on the manikin's hands only for…show more content…
From the biomechanics analysis, the percentage reduction in compression limit, i.e. (stress) using a redesigned workstation as compared to existing workstation with posture 1 and 95 percentile manikin is: % reduction in compression limit= (1344.75-459)/1344.75×100 % reduction in compression limit= 65.86 Thus, there is considerable reduction (1763 to 459 N/m2) in the compressive stress value on the worker’s L4-L5 vertebra. Values of moments and forces coming on the body are significantly reduced for new modified workstation. This indicates that the operator is in more comfortable posture than the original, which may also increase in the productivity and efficiency of the operator. Moreover, the values of the moment, axial twist compression, joint shear and abdominal force are also considerably reduced by using modified workstation. 5 Validation of results 5.1 Manufacturing of redesigned workstation Modified workstation modelled and analysed in the virtual environment of CATIA V5 R19 was developed at actual (Figure 8) and the validation was

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