Application of digital human models in determination of the pedal force while driving

© Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd. One of the most important tasks of the car manufacturer is the design of the interior space of the vehicle. Anthropometric characteristics of drivers are also important for designing cars. In this paper the determination of the pedal force has been performed. The force determination was made on digital human models for different populations, a total of 11 different populations of men and women. Analysing was done in the software package Ramsis and subjects were presented using mannequin. The obtained force values were different for different populations. The correlation between the anthropometric measures of the subjects and the force on the pedals was observed. By calculating Pearson R coefficient in both populations, female 5 % and male 95 %, it can be concluded that there is a good correlation between active foot pedal force and driver's height (R2 = 0.84 and R2 = 0.72, respectively). In the case of maximum values of passive forces R coefficient in both populations also have a good correlation between passive pedal force and driver's height (R2 = 0.89 for female 5% population and R2 = 0.69 for male 95 % population). The obtained results are important for designing the interior of the vehicle

EDUCATION FOR LEAN & LEAN FOR EDUCATION: A LITERATURE REVIEW

The purpose of this paper is to investigate and understand how tools and principles of Lean philosophy can be adopted to improve the effectiveness of engineering education by providing services beyond the competition and costs below the competition, and how engineering education can provide better prepared engineering professionals capable to work in dynamic Lean environments by developing multidisciplinary knowledge and skills. Paper will be based on analysis of relevant scientific and professional literature sources, including certain elements of description, classification, explanation and prediction. The authors will use detailed literature review to explain complex relationship and interdependence between Lean philosophy and engineering education and answer the question what benefits modern Lean enterprises may expect from properly educated and qualified engineers and how application of Lean tools and principles can improve the system of engineering education

Improving quality of work life through electrophysiology : an idea accepted by industry

Quality of Work Life (QWL) and Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) are two interconnected and important human needs. Modern industry shows a clear will for improving QWL and OHS, nevertheless, existent automatization and technological advances may negatively influence employees' wellbeing and result as triggers to their health deterioration. Subjective measures of employees workload can help, however, the lack of objectivity may be an issue. Improvement of working life needs objective measures. There is technology for measuring objectively employees' psychophysiology, but is considered to interfere with the flexibility needed for performing working tasks. Today electrophysiological methods require minimal dimensions, are wireless connected, allow movement and are proved to be useful in capturing psychophysical wellbeing. This study shows that the industry is ready to accept electrophysiological measures for monitoring and improving the employees' wellbeing

Extended process failure mode and effect analysis (PFMEA) for the automotive industry: The FSQC-PFMEA

© 2018 PEI, University of Maribor. All rights reserved. This paper mainly addresses constraints of the PFMEA for the automotive industry. The safety and cost aspect are integrated into traditional severity index. Therefore, for this purpose, three new indices are invented - safety severity index; quality severity index and cost severity index. For both safety severity index and cost severity index, new tables with crisp values belong to the interval (1-10) were invented. While for quality severity index was kept traditional severity table for the automotive industry. The relative importance of these three indices is stated by the fuzzy pair-wise comparison matrix. The weights vectors are calculated by applying the extent analyses. In order to overcome these constraints, but to keep traditional framework of the PFMEA for automotive industry, new fuzzy PFMEA with respect to safety, quality and cost (FSQC-PFMEA) is presented. It can be denotes as the main findings of this paper. At last, the proposed model is tested by real-life data which come from one automotive company supplier and compared with traditional way in the case study. Chosen company use IATF 16949 standard for automotive industry and reference manual presented by Automotive Industry Agency Group (AIAG). Therefore, use of the PFMEA is obligated in this company

An innovative prognostic risk assessment tool for manufacturing sector based on the management of the human, organizational and technical/technological factors

The article deals with an innovative methodology for risk assessment concerning human, organizational and technical/technological (HOT) factors, based on fuzzy set theory. The aim of this paper is to propose userfriendly prognostic risk assessment tool (PgRA) by obtaining reliable results and supporting further decisions of the safety managers. The HOT factors are introduced with associated sub-factors. The user-friendly interface developed in Matlab environment provides multiple opportunities for further improvement. The settings presented in this article are strictly applied for, but not limited to manufacturing sector. Flexibility of the PgRA tool allows adjustments and customize model regarding the group of the companies. With introduction of fuzzy set theory in the risk assessment process, level of subjectivity is reduced to the minimum. Practical applications: Possibilities of the practical application are modeled to assist in decrease of identified risks during daily work. This is a useful visual management tool, helpful to all safety managers in planning workplace improvements. The safety managers are in position to predict risk level before the real measures are taken. They are able to show the possible realistic results and risk trend behaviour to their supervisor/director, without spending any financial resources

Benefits of instructed responding in manual assembly tasks: An ERP approach

© 2016 Mijović, Ković, De Vos, Mačužić, Jeremić and Gligorijević. The majority of neuroergonomics studies are focused mainly on investigating the interaction between operators and automated systems. Far less attention has been dedicated to the investigation of brain processes in more traditional workplaces, such as manual assembly, which are still ubiquitous in industry. The present study investigates whether assembly workers’ attention can be enhanced if they are instructed with which hand to initiate the assembly operation, as opposed to the case when they can commence the operation with whichever hand they prefer. For this aim, we replicated a specific workplace, where 17 participants in the study simulated a manual assembly operation of the rubber hoses that are used in vehicle hydraulic brake systems, while wearing wireless electroencephalography (EEG). The specific EEG feature of interest for this study was the P300 components’ amplitude of the event-related potential (ERP), as it has previously been shown that it is positively related to human attention. The behavioral attention-related modality of reaction times (RTs) was also recorded. Participants were presented with two distinct tasks during the simulated operation, which were counterbalanced across participants. In the first task, digits were used as indicators for the operation initiation (Numbers task), where participants could freely choose with which hand they would commence the action upon seeing the digit. In the second task, participants were presented with arrows, which served as instructed operation initiators (Arrows task), and they were instructed to start each operation with the hand that corresponded to the arrow direction. The results of this study showed that the P300 amplitude was significantly higher in the instructed condition. Interestingly, the RTs did not differ across any task conditions. This, together with the other findings of this study, suggests that attention levels can be increased using instructed responses without compromising work performance or operators’ well-being, paving the way for future applications in manual assembly task design

Impact of contaminated fluid on the working performances of hydraulic directional control valves

© 2019 Journal of Mechanical Engineering. The study aims to investigate the impact of solid particles on the directional hydraulic valve operation. Experiments have been performed for a certain number of operating cycles to measure the impact of the working fluid cleanliness level on the intensity of the wear on contact surfaces as well as on other failures in the operation of the directional control valve. For experimental purposes, a mechanically actuated control valve 4/2 is used. The wear intensity of working elements was determined for different levels of oil contamination by solid particles. Also, experimental results have shown that there are differences between theoretically calculated and the measured flow through the radial clearance. By measuring pressure drop values during the fluid flow through the valve, it was found that oils with the lowest cleanliness level have a greater dispersion of the measured values. The results will contribute to better understanding the impact of working fluid cleanliness on possible defects and failures happening inside hydraulic system components

Digital training and advanced learning in occupational safety and health based on modern and affordable technologies

Occupational safety and health (OSH) is a very important issue for both practical purposes in industry and business due to numerous reasons, so a number of software, educational and industrial solutions are available. In this paper, the cloud-based mobile application for digital training and advanced learning in the field of occupational safety was presented. The proposed framework architecture was based on a novel approach: Node.JS for the server backend and the React Native for the front-end development; while MongoDB was used for implementing the cloud data storage using sensors that are all available on the Android platform. In the development of this application, a number of options were developed (using open-source software) such as the reading of a QR code, usage of built-in sensors within android platforms, reporting, and voice messages. The developed SafeST solution is presented through a real industry example. It emphasizes two main possibilities of the solution, improving OHS reporting and significant empowerment of the students in the OHS field based on the learning-by-doing approach. In this way, the additional engagement (identification, recording and reporting of UA/UC) of OSH managers has been reduced to a minimum, taking into account requested reports from management and authorities, and the continual training of the employees and preparation of the students for future working activities. The system was tested for educational purposes with the initial idea to develop an application for smartphones which could be useful and well adopted among engineering students in the OSH field

Decision Support System for Dimensional Inspection of Extruded Rubber Profiles

© 2013 IEEE. Since small and medium enterprises (SME) generate the most of gross domestic product and employment opportunities in developed countries, further progress of the Industry 4.0 strongly relies on the development of dedicated solutions for SMEs-specific problems. Dimensional inspection of extruded rubber profiles represents one such an open issue in the automotive industry, which currently requires a manual measurement and comparison of profiles' cross section with the corresponding technical drawings. Starting from the requirements acquired from the industry practice, this study proposes a novel solution that automates all steps during the inspection process allowing an operator to make the final decision with respect to his observations. The proposed workflow includes the following steps: 1) image acquisition, 2) system calibration, 3) profile segmentation, 4) landmark registration and 5) augmentation of the referent technical drawing over the acquired image. The overall solution was developed by using a single camera and dedicated algorithms for profile detection and augmentation of the referent technical drawing. The extensive validation showed that the solution increased operators' productivity and reliability by a considerable margin (~6%), while it remains affordable, user-friendly and generic

Assessment of the Fragility of the Municipal Waste Sector in Serbia Using System Dynamics Modelling

This research develops a novel methodology for municipal waste management in Ser-bia, based on system dynamics modelling. The methodology shows how a country and relevant institutions should address complexities in the waste management sector. Waste management is a critical issue globally, which heavily impacts the economic development of a country, including the general quality of life within a society. The designed simulation generates different scenarios of the Serbian municipal waste system for reaching the 2035 recycling rate targets. Methodologies such as the theory of constraints, fragility analysis, and systems dynamics were implemented in the model. The scenarios and fragility modelling were conducted with the system dynamics modelling methodology in the Ventity simulation environment. The designed model has elements of discrete event simulations, system dynamics, and agent-based modelling. Importantly, real-world data for the period of five years (from the year 2016 to 2020) was used in the case study. This research undoubtedly reveals that the informal sector is the key source of fragility to the dynamic system considered. During the considered period, the informal sector contributed 62.3% of all separated waste to the system. Consequently, this research concludes that for the waste sector in Serbia to reach the 2035 EU goals, the existing practice in waste management has to be changed significantly and will benefit from the modelling approach used here. The whole system is highly dependent on the informal sector, which, in its current form, is volatile, unregulated, and fragile to aggressive regulative policies