ErgoEye: Operational Real-Time Assessment of Ergonomics in Flexible Manufacturing

World-class manufacturers such as Cosworth already have robust ergonomic health and safety procedures. However, in highly adaptive flexible manufacturing, processes can change on a weekly basis. Existing ergonomic assessment techniques are designed to establish worker-friendly processes with much longer time frames. There is a risk that ergonomic considerations will constantly lag behind the process changes in flexible manufacturing, causing human workers to perform their tasks with outdated ergonomic health and safety considerations. For instance, a new workflow when carried out by a set of workers can give rise to emergent features, whereby a particular workstation becomes overloaded with a repetitive task, increasing the risk of work-related musculoskeletal disorders. This is a major barrier to adoption of highly flexible and adaptive manufacturing systems. To address this barrier, this project aims to leverage recent digital technologies arising from a number of fields to put in place a novel system, ErgoEye, whereby human workers' actions are captured and digitised in a secure way that enables operational real-time assessment of ergonomics in flexible manufacturing. ErgoEye will address ergonomic risks in flexible manufacturing so that worker well-being and overall productivity can be optimised to adapt to rapid changes in customer demands. This is a highly novel system and is currently not available for use in the manufacturing industry. The project addresses the specific competition theme on "the novel application of a digital technology to manufacturing development."