Implementation of Ergonomics Evaluation Methods in a Multi-Objective Optimization Framework

Aitor Iriando Pascual, Dan Högberg, Anna Syberfeldt, Erik Brolin, Francisco Garciá Rivera, Estela Pérez Luque & Lars Hanson (2020). Implementation of Ergonomics Evaluation Methods in a Multi-Objective Optimization Framework. Conference paper DHM 2020.

Simulations of future production systems enable engineers to find effective and efficient design solutions with fewer physical prototypes and fewer reconstructions. This can save development time and money and be more sustainable. Better design solutions can be found by linking simulations to multi-objective optimization methods to optimize multiple design objectives. When production systems involve manual work, humans and human activity should be included in the simulation. This can be done using digital human modeling (DHM) software which simulates humans and human activities and can be used to evaluate ergonomic conditions. This paper addresses challenges related to including existing ergonomics evaluation methods in the optimization framework. This challenge arises because ergonomics evaluation methods are typically developed to enable people to investigate ergonomic conditions by observing real work situations. The methods are rarely developed to be used by computer algorithms to draw conclusions about ergonomic conditions. This paper investigates how to adapt ergonomics evaluation methods to implement the results as objectives in the optimization framework. This paper presents a use case of optimizing a workstation using two different approaches: 1) an observational ergonomics evaluation method, and 2) a direct measurement method. Both approaches optimized two objectives: the average ergonomics results, and the 90 th percentile ergonomics results. Access publication.