• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.29 no.6
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• pp.897-905
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• 2010

The purpose of this study is to identify relationships between safety and health indices in a shipbuilding industry. From the results of periodical health examination, job stress test, and health questionnaire for musculoskeletal disorders, the author stratified the 704 shipbuilding workers into categories of smoking, drinking frequency, the amount of exercise per week, obesity, blood pressure, diabetic symptoms, liver function, audibility, job stress, fatigued condition, musculoskeletal symptom, and accident. The results show that occupational injuries are highly related to smoking, drinking frequency, auditory capacity, fatigued condition, and musculoskeletal symptoms. These results can be used to develop more effective accidental occupational injury prevention programs for shipbuilding industries.

• Journal of the Society of Naval Architects of Korea
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• v.45 no.6
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• pp.637-645
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• 2008

It is very hard to control the quality of coating work in shipbuilding process, because it is highly affected by several parameters such as space between object and nozzle tip, spray velocity, pressure, tip size, etc.. Even so a coating work in shipbuilding is done by workers' experience and skill as yet. It causes not only an excessive use of paints but also a decrease of productivity. In order to solve this problem, we developed a formula that predicts the film thickness and determined the proper coating pattern. Also we had done a series of experiments to verify the results of this study.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.143-149
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• 2012

Objective: The aim of this study is to gain an overview of the risk assessment and management system in the shipbuilding industry. Background: The use of risk assessment techniques has grown significantly in recent years. Method: Various references have been reviewed to evaluate risk assessment and management policy. Results: Adapting the risk assessment system has become an important approach not only to prevent industrial accidents but also to enhance the efficiency of works for shipbuilding workers. Conclusion: Risk assessment is an approved technology for operators to address larger hazards, and to ensure risks have been reduced to appropriate levels cost effectively. Application: These results can be used to provide baseline information for risk assessment and management policy.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.487-493
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• 2010

Work related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) became a major problem since 2000 in shipbuilding industry. WMSDs are known to be resulted from awkward postures, high repetitive motions, excessive forces, mechanical stress and vibration. Korean government enacted a law to require companies to take measures to prevent musculoskeletal disorders at work. If there are more than 10 incidences of WMSDs or 5 incidences which are more than 10 percent of all workers in a company, this law requires a company to implement an ergonomics program. A few large companies in shipbuilding industry have already implemented or are in the process of implementing an ergonomics program. This paper presents a case study of an implementation of an ergonomics program in a Korean shipbuilding company. We audited the process of the ergonomics program in this shipbuilding company four times for 3 years. Based on the findings, this paper presents effects and problems of an ergonomics program and improvement measures of them. These findings will help companies which want to implement an ergonomics program in the future.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.132-135
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• 2009

The population over 65 years of age in Korea will be 10.3% of the entire population in 2008 indicating that Korea is already in an aging society. In addition, it is expected that Korea will be in an aged society in 2018 (population over 65 years of age : 14.3%) and that it will be in a post-aged society in 2026 (20.8%). Consequently, aged workers may also increase. It is well-known that the possibility to work longer and to live better is highly related to the work ability of individual. The objective of this study was to evaluate the work ability of each age group using the Work Ability Index(WAI) in the shipbuilding industry, and to assess the effects of social psychological stress, drinking characteristics, smoking characteristics, etc. on the WAI score. The results showed no significant difference on the effects of aging, drinking, and smoking characteristics. Interestingly, a statistical analysis on the effects of social psychological stress revealed a significant difference by stress levels. The difference of the average WAI score between the healthy group and the high risk group was about 10 points. Based on this result, it can be concluded that the stress level is an influential factor on WAI.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.89-98
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• 2011

Work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) have become a hot issue in the Korean workplace for the past several years. So many manufacturing companies have tried to improve the work environments for the control and the prevention of the WMSDs. This study investigates the relation between WMSDs and job stress from 965 workers in a shipbuilding company by questionnaire analysis. The seven job stress factors which are job autonomy, job insecurity, organizational system, workplace culture, unfair compensation, relationship conflict, and job requirement were analyzed. The prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders symptoms were 12.9%. The analysis showed that job stress by job autonomy was higher than that by job stress factor. WMSDs were associated with job requirement, organizational system, unfair compensation and workplace culture. The results could be used to design the management program for the reduction of job stress.

• Proceedings of the Korea Society for Simulation Conference
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.185-192
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• 2003

Digital Manufacturing-based production could be very effective in shipbuilding in order to save costs and time, to increase safety for workers, and to prevent bottleneck processes in advance. Digital shipbuilding system, a simulation-based production tool, is being developed to achieve such aspects in Korea. To simulate material flow in a subassembly line at a shipyard, the product, process and resources was modeled for the subassembly process which consisted of several sub-processes such as tack welding, piece alignment, tack welding, and robot welding processes. The analysis and modeling were carried out by using the UML(Unified Modeling Language), an object-oriented modeling method as well as IDEF(Integration DEFinition), a functional modeling tool. Initially, the characteristics of the shop resources were analyzed using the shipyard data, and the layout of the subassembly line was designed with the resources. The production process modeling of the subassembly lines was performed using the discrete event simulation method. Using the constructed resource and process model, the productivity and efficiency of the line were investigated. The number of workers and the variations In the resource performance such as that of a new welding robot were examined to simulate the changes in productivity. The bottleneck process floated according to the performance of the new resources. The proposed model was viewed three-dimensionally in a digital environment so that interferences among objects and space allocations for the resources could be easily investigated

• Journal of Korea Society of Industrial Information Systems
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.53-62
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• 2023

This paper has suggested the necessity of introducing training contents using XR(Extended reality) technology as a way to lower the high rate of nursing accidents among unskilled technical personnel in domestic shipbuilding industry, focusing on cable pulling using winch. The occurrence rate of nursing accidents in the domestic shipbuilding industry was almost double(197.4%) (2017~2020) when compared with other manufacturing industries. In particular, it is worth noting that more than 31.8% of nursing accidents in the shipbuilding industry occurred among workers whose job experience is no more than 6 months. Most of new workers are seen to have hard time due to several factors such as lack of work information, inexperience, and unfamiliarity with the working environments. This indicates that it is essential to incorporate more effective training method that could help new workers become familiar with technical skills as well as working environments in a short period of time. Currently, education/training at the domestic shipyard is biased toward technical skills such as welding, painting, machine installation, and electrical installation. Contrary, even more important training required to get new workers used to the working environment has remained at a superficial level such as explaining ship building processes using 2D drawings. This may be the reason why it is inevitable to repeat similar training at OJT (On-the-Job Training) even at the leading domestic companies. Domestic shipbuilding industries have been attracting a lot of new workers thanks to recent economic recovery, which is very likely to increase the occurrence of disasters. In this paper, the introduction of training using XR technology was proposed, and as a specific example, the process of pulling cables using winches on ships was implemented as XR-based training content by using Unity. Using the developed content, it demonstrated that new workers can experience the actual work process in advance through simulation in a virtual space, thereby becoming more effective training content that can help new workers become familiar with the work environment.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.20 no.7
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• pp.760-766
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• 2014

This paper represents a portable robot for use in the welding process of the double hulls in shipbuilding yards. It has 5 degrees of freedom and 3kg of payload. Its body weight is 17.3 [kg] so that human workers can carry it by hand to the work place. Its body is mainly made of magnesium and aluminum alloys. Since the robot is placed about 25m apart from its controller, EtherCAT is adopted for reliable connection between the robot and controller through a single light cable. RTX real-time kernel and KPA EtherCAT master are used to control the robot on a Windows XP environment. The performance of the developed robot is satisfactory to the requirement in welding tasks of U-type cells in shipbuilding yards.

• Journal of the Society of Naval Architects of Korea
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• v.56 no.2
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• pp.128-134
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• 2019

In shipbuilding, accurate fabrication of curved hull plates is one of the most important steps, since the shape of ship hull, which is very critical in the overall performance of a ship, is a collection of such plates. The curved hull plates forming process requires a significant amount of time by skilled workers in shipbuilding. In general, the workers cause thermal distortion in the plate and forming initial shape using gas heat source. So shipbuilding companies need skilled workers who have long experience. To solve the problem, a lot of researchers tried to develop automation system for curved hull plates. In this paper, we propose automatic heating system with gantry robot, high frequency induction heater to replace the gas heat source and automatic measurement system. We apply the system to forming concave type plate that is actually used in ship manufacturing. In addition, a system was developed to automatically generate heating information, such as the heating location and the heating speed, for actual heating process. Then the system was applied to the actual heating material. It is shown that the proposed triangle heating pattern makes desired concave shape successfully. The induction heating system showed that it can be used for automation system of curved hull plates forming process replacing gas heat source.