• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.15-31
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• 2000

The aim was to evaluate the prevailing ergonomic and psychosocial conditions regarding low back injury in an automobile assembly system. This study consisted of two parts. In the first part of the study, analytic biomechanical model and NIOSH guidelines were applied to evaluate risk levels of low back injury for automobile assembly jobs. Total of 246 workers were analysed. There were 20 jobs having greater back compressive forces than 300kg at L5/S1. Also, there were 44 jobs over Action Limit with respect to 1981 NIOSH guidelines. This might in part be explained by the ergonomic conditions of the company analysed generally being good, with a relatively low duration of 'combined' extreme work posture. The relationship between psychosocial factors and low back injury was examined in the second part of the study. It has recently been recognized that overall reaction to working conditions was influenced by a range of factors, some of which were physical and some psychosocial. The psychosocial environment surrounding the work place may contribute to the perception of risk and eventual ill-health. A battery of questionnaires concerning the psychosocial stress based on PWI(Psychosocial Well-being Index) and musculoskeletal pain symptoms at low back was completed by 246 workers at the same plant. Results showed that 207 out 246 workers experienced the symptoms and 27 workers were diagnosed as patients. Two groups(low stressed, high stressed) based on PWI score had no significant relationships with both symptoms and results of diagnosis. However, sensitivities for symptoms and diagnosis by PWI were 91.3% and 92.6% respectively. Finally, relationships between physical work load and psychosocial stress were analysed. Specifically, some postural factors {vertical deviation angle of forearm, horizontal deviation angle of upperarm, vertical deviation angle of thigh, etc) were highly correlated with psychosocial stress. The results illustrated that PWI scores were associated with some physical workloads. However, psychosocial stress levels couldn't be well related with the pain symptom as well as the actual incidence of low back injury since pain or discomfort regarding low back injury were more complex than that of other musculoskeletal disorders.

• Design & Manufacturing
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.8-14
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• 2020

In general, auto parts production assembly line is assembled and produced by automatic mounting by an automated robot. In such a production site, quality problems such as misalignment of parts (doors, trunks, roofs, etc.) to be assembled with the vehicle body or collision between assembly robots and components are often caused. In order to solve such a problem, the quality of parts is manually inspected by using mechanical jig devices outside the automated production line. Automotive inspection technology is the most commonly used field of vision, which includes surface inspection such as mounting hole spacing and defect detection, body panel dents and bends. It is used for guiding, providing location information to the robot controller to adjust the robot's path to improve process productivity and manufacturing flexibility. The most difficult weighing and measuring technology is to calibrate the surface analysis and position and characteristics between parts by storing images of the part to be measured that enters the camera's field of view mounted on the side or top of the part. The problem of the machine vision device applied to the automobile production line is that the lighting conditions inside the factory are severely changed due to various weather changes such as morning-evening, rainy days and sunny days through the exterior window of the assembly production plant. In addition, since the material of the vehicle body parts is a steel sheet, the reflection of light is very severe, which causes a problem in that the quality of the captured image is greatly changed even with a small light change. In this study, the distance between the car body and the door part and the door are acquired by the measuring device combining the laser slit light source and the LED pattern light source. The result is transferred to the joint robot for assembling parts at the optimum position between parts, and the assembly is done at the optimal position by changing the angle and step.

• Journal of the Korea Society for Simulation
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.147-154
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• 2009

In this study we investigate the problem of reducing color change cost at painting operations in an automobile assembly plant. Changing control logic at conveyor junction points prior to the top coat line has been proposed and analyzed using the discrete event simulation model we developed using AutoMod. We also discussed the project which initiated this research as well as the details of painting operations. Simulation analysis showed that the grouping ratio increases from 1.8 to 2.5 if the proposed control logic change is applied to the plant. Contrary to other approaches such as using dedicated equipment for resequencing, our approach has the merit of less investment cost, no need for additional space consumption. We finally note that the grouping ratio can be further increased if our algorithms is implemented as well as CRS (Color Rescheduling Storage) is installed.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.21 no.8
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• pp.342-347
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• 2020

Recently, as the collaborative robot has been introduced into the domestic industrial robot market, it is installed mainly in the manufacturing industry. Collaborative robots are subject to the safety regulations of industrial robots by Article 93 of the Safety Inspection of the Industrial Safety and Health Act. The sites where collaborative robots are to be installed must perform risk assessments for robots-humans, work environments, and work methods and reduce the risks according to ISO 10218-2 and ISO 12100. On the other hand, because it is early in the introduction of collaborative robots, new risks for collaborative robots have not been issued, and risk assessments are unfamiliar and difficult to apply in the workplace. The risk assessment of collaborative robots aims to identify and reduce the risk of a high probability of occurrence by focusing on the abnormal behavior of humans, human errors, equipment defects, and interlock functions. In this study, a risk assessment was applied to a domestic automobile parts production plant, and improvement measures were drawn. This risk assessment is expected to be useful for improving the safety of small businesses by continuously discovering risk assessment examples of collaborative robots.

• Journal of the Korea Society for Simulation
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.11-18
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• 2023

This study analyzes the effect of a handshake location of an AS/RS with twin cranes for mixed-model production line at an automobile plant. Implementing a handshake operation has the advantage for preventing route interference between twin cranes that operate without crossing into each other's working areas. However the handshake operation requires additional unloading and loading processes to retrieve assembly parts beyond the handshake area. Therefore the decision regarding the handshake location is crucial to improve efficiency of storage and retrieval operations. Simulation results show that the handshake operation with the optimal handshake location reduces the average response time of storage requests to 87% compared to non-handshake operation.

• Computational Structural Engineering
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.95-103
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• 1994

The safety related components in the nuclear power plant should be designed to withstand the seismic load. Among these components the integrity of reactor internals under earthquake load is important in stand points of safety and economics, because these are classified to Seismic Class I components. So far the modelling methods of reactor internals have been investigated by many authors. In this paper, the dynamic behaviour of reactor internals of Yong Gwang 1&2 nuclear power plants under SSE(Safe Shutdown Earthquake) load is analyzed by using of the simpled Global Beam Model. For this, as a first step, the characteristic analysis of reactor internal components are performed by using of the finite element code ANSYS. And the Global Beam Model for reactor internals which includes beam elements, nonlinear impact springs which have gaps in upper and lower positions, and hydrodynamical couplings which simulate the fluid-filled cylinders of reactor vessel and core barrel structures is established. And for the exciting external force the response spectrum which is applied to reactor support is converted to the time history input. With this excitation and the model the dynamic behaviour of reactor internals is obtained. As the results, the structural integrity of reactor internal components under seismic excitation is verified and the input for the detailed duel assembly series model could be obtained. And the simplicity and effectiveness of Global Beam Model and the economics of the explicit Runge-Kutta-Gills algorithm in impact problem of high frequency interface components are confirmed.

• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
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• v.9 no.spc
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• pp.107-122
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• 2003

The object of this study is to evaluate the prevailing physical and psychosocial conditions regarding occupational low back injury. This study consists of two parts. In the first part of the study, analytic biomechanical model and NIOSH guidelines are applied to evaluate risk levels of low back injury for automobile assembly jobs. Total of 246 workers are analysed. There are 20 jobs having greater back compressive forces than 300kg at L5/S1. Also, there are 44 jobs over Action Limit with respect to 1981 NIOSH guidelines. The relationship between psychosocial factors and low back injury was examined in the second part of the study. A battery of questionnaires concerning the psychosocial stress based on PWI (Psychosocial Well-being Index) and musculoskeletal pain symptoms at low back was completed by 246 workers at the same plant. Results showed that 207 out 246 workers experienced the symptoms and 27 workers were diagnosed as patients. Two groups(low stressed, high stressed) based on PWI score had no significant relationships with both symptoms and results of diagnosis. The relationships between physical work load and psychosocial stress were also analysed. Specifically, some postural factors(vertical deviation angle of forearm, horizontal deviation angle of upperarm, vertical deviation angle of thigh, etc) were highly correlated with psychosocial stress. The results illustrated that PWI scores were associated with some physical workloads. However, psychosocial stress levels couldn't be well related with the pain symptom as well as the actual incidence of low back injury since pain or discomfort regarding low back injury were more complex than that of other musculoskeletal disorders.