Since the first appearance of hand-tools, artisans and engineers have attempted to make handwork as comfortable as possible. In the second half of twentieth century, awareness raising by industrialists about ergonomics and safety made the preventive evaluation of workplace ergonomics/comfort an essential element of product/process design. ISO 11228 provided guidelines for improving overall operator performance, as well as reducing the risk of muscle-skeletal disease. Companies, designers and engineers use their knowledge to improve work environments and artefacts to enhance worker performance and improve user safety. In the digital era (since the 1990s) new virtual prototyping (VP) techniques and their development and deployment in industrial environments have allowed products, processes and workplaces to be designed and redesigned in a virtual environment. Similarly, Digital Human Modelling (DHM) techniques and instruments allow designers and engineers to virtualise the human/machine interaction (HMI) and to preventively assess ergonomic elements, resulting in an improved appeal to the market. Nevertheless, the ‘comfort’ issue is still an open problem due to the subjectivity of performances and to the difficulty in developing a ‘model’ of perception that is both easily integrated in VP and can be used for designing new products/processes/workplaces. The introduction of comfort-driven design into the product/process development plan remains a challenge for scientists, engineers, designers and others. This paper gives an overview of the state of the art concerning ergonomicdriven and comfort-driven design in companies’ innovation activities. It also proposes a general ‘comfort model’ and a general ‘design framework’ for introducing a comfort-driven step to product target setting.

Comfort-driven target setting

naddeo a
Membro del Collaboration Group
2017-01-01

Abstract

Since the first appearance of hand-tools, artisans and engineers have attempted to make handwork as comfortable as possible. In the second half of twentieth century, awareness raising by industrialists about ergonomics and safety made the preventive evaluation of workplace ergonomics/comfort an essential element of product/process design. ISO 11228 provided guidelines for improving overall operator performance, as well as reducing the risk of muscle-skeletal disease. Companies, designers and engineers use their knowledge to improve work environments and artefacts to enhance worker performance and improve user safety. In the digital era (since the 1990s) new virtual prototyping (VP) techniques and their development and deployment in industrial environments have allowed products, processes and workplaces to be designed and redesigned in a virtual environment. Similarly, Digital Human Modelling (DHM) techniques and instruments allow designers and engineers to virtualise the human/machine interaction (HMI) and to preventively assess ergonomic elements, resulting in an improved appeal to the market. Nevertheless, the ‘comfort’ issue is still an open problem due to the subjectivity of performances and to the difficulty in developing a ‘model’ of perception that is both easily integrated in VP and can be used for designing new products/processes/workplaces. The introduction of comfort-driven design into the product/process development plan remains a challenge for scientists, engineers, designers and others. This paper gives an overview of the state of the art concerning ergonomicdriven and comfort-driven design in companies’ innovation activities. It also proposes a general ‘comfort model’ and a general ‘design framework’ for introducing a comfort-driven step to product target setting.
2017
979-12-200-2249-1
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11386/4706664
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