A device to monitor fatigue level in order-picking

2018 ◽  
Vol 118 (4) ◽  
pp. 714-727 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martina Calzavara ◽  
Alessandro Persona ◽  
Fabio Sgarbossa ◽  
Valentina Visentin
Keyword(s):  
Heart Rate ◽  
Human Factors ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Order Picking ◽  
Physical Fatigue ◽  
Heart Rate Monitor ◽  
Content Type ◽  
New Device ◽  
Industrial Context ◽  
Picking System

Purpose In order-picking activities, the performance of the system can be influenced by different variables such as the order to be fulfilled, the distance to be covered or the experience of operators. Usually, this kind of activity is performed by operators rather than machines to assure flexibility. Consequently, their fatigue accumulation can decrease the performance of the overall system. The purpose of this paper is to define the kind of device to be used in an order-picking context, to obtain data which can be utilized for the evaluation of the level of fatigue and to improve the performance of the picking system. Design/methodology/approach The paper presents a comparison between existing fatigue methods which can be applied in a picking context. In addition, an analysis of the physiological literature for the evaluation of a new device for the monitoring of fatigue level is carried on and its practical use is shown. Findings The proposed research identifies in the heart rate monitor the device that, thanks to its advantages, can be the best one to be used in an industrial context for monitoring the physical fatigue of operators. Originality/value This study considers the importance of human factors in picking activities such as physical fatigue of operators and the need to have validated tools to monitor and to define the level of fatigue accumulation in each activity of different rate and duration.

By the seat of your pants

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 33-35
Keyword(s):  
Heart Rate ◽  
Experiential Learning ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Reading Time ◽  
Cutting Edge ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Pertinent Information ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Practical Implications

Purpose This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies. Design/methodology/approach This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds his/her own impartial comments and places the articles in context. Findings The aim of the research here was to investigate the impact experiential learning can have on an organization, and what kind of factor the stress of leadership can be. It was found that increased heart rate and engagement can improve learning in stressful situations. Originality/value The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

Study of Québec healthworkers shows a positive psychosocial safety climate (PSC) reduces reliance on “workarounds”

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 45-46
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Exhaustion ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Safety Climate ◽  
Working Environment ◽  
Mutual Trust ◽  
Physical Fatigue ◽  
Healthcare Organizations ◽  
Open Communication ◽  
Content Type

Purpose The purpose was to work out whether by creating a positive working environment reduced turnarounds by reducing the risk of physical fatigue, cognitive weariness and emotional exhaustion. Design/methodology/approach The researchers conducted their study in Québec, with the partnership of the main union of nurses, the Inter-professional Federation of Health of Québec. They received 562 responses. Hypothesis 1 was: “High PSC will decrease workarounds via decreasing physical fatigue as a mediator.” H2 was: “High PSC will decrease workarounds via decreasing cognitive weariness as a mediator.” H3 was: “High PSC will decrease workarounds via decreasing emotional exhaustion as a mediator.” Findings The results supported all the three hypotheses, meaning that physical fatigue, cognitive weariness and emotional exhaustion all mediate relationships between PSC and workarounds. Originality/value The authors argue that their research demonstrates how healthcare organizations would benefit from changing the culture that sees nurses losing an average of 33 minutes on a 7.5-hour shift. The extra pressures lead directly to a workaround culture, the authors say. They argue that organizations should work to ensure that good systems for open communication and mutual trust exist. Managers should encourage workers to talk about difficulties, including issues around blockages and workarounds.

scholarly journals The development of a clinical interface for a novel newborn resuscitation device; a Human Factors approach to understand cognitive user requirements. (Preprint)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Pickup ◽  
Alexandra Lang ◽  
Lara Shipley ◽  
Caroline Henry ◽  
James Carpenter ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Heart Rate ◽  
Human Factors ◽  
Medical Device ◽  
Interface Design ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Unmet Need ◽  
Neonatal Resuscitation ◽  
Design Approach ◽  
New Device ◽  
User Centred Design

BACKGROUND A novel medical device has been developed to address an unmet need in standardising and facilitating heart rate recording during neonatal resuscitation. In a time critical emergency resuscitation, where failure can mean death of an infant, it is vital that clinicians are provided with information in a timely, precise and clear manner to capacitate appropriate decision making. This new technology provides a hands free, wireless heart rate monitoring solution that easily fits the clinical pathway and procedure for neonatal resuscutation. To understand the requirements of the interface design for this new device, a human factors approach was implemented. This combined a traditional user-centred design approach with an Applied Cognititive Task Analysis (ACTA) to understand the tasks involved, the cognitive requirements and the potential for error during a neonatal resusciation scenario. OBJECTIVE 1. To understand the cognitive requirements of clinicians for a novel medical device to facilitate neonatal resuscitation; 2. To apply a human factors approach and a traditional user-centred design approach to provide a device interface specification. METHODS Fourteen clinical staff were involved in producing the final design requirements. Two paediatric doctors supported the development of a visual representation of the activities associated with neonatal resucitation. This was used to develop a scenario based workshop. Two workshops were carried out in parallel and involved three paediatric doctors, three neonatal nurses, two advance neonatal practitioners and four midwives. Both groups came together at the end to reflect on the findings which emerged during the separate sessions. RESULTS The outputs of this study have provided a comprehensive description of information requirements during neonatal resuscitation, and enabled product developers to understand the core and preferred requirements of the user interface design for the device. The study raised three key areas for the designers to consider, which had not previously been highlighted. These related to interface layout and information priority, size and portability of the device and auditory feedback. CONCLUSIONS This study demonstrates the value of the ACTA approach to inform the development of resuscitation devices, and more generally for medical device development.

Development of a solution for adding a collaborative robot to an industrial AGV

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (5) ◽  
pp. 723-735
Author(s):  
Floyd D'Souza ◽  
João Costa ◽  
J. Norberto Pires
Keyword(s):  
User Interface ◽  
Industry 4.0 ◽  
Order Picking ◽  
Mobile Manipulator ◽  
Shop Floor ◽  
Robotic Hand ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Active Space ◽  
Collaborative Robot ◽  
Picking System

Purpose The Industry 4.0 initiative – with its ultimate objective of revolutionizing the supply-chain – putted more emphasis on smart and autonomous systems, creating new opportunities to add flexibility and agility to automatic manufacturing systems. These systems are designed to free people from monotonous and repetitive tasks, enabling them to concentrate in knowledge-based jobs. One of these repetitive functions is the order-picking task which consists of collecting parts from storage (warehouse) and distributing them among the ordering stations. An order-picking system can also pick finished parts from working stations to take them to the warehouse. The purpose of this paper is to present a simplified model of a robotic order-picking system, i.e. a mobile manipulator composed by an automated guided vehicle (AGV), a collaborative robot (cobot) and a robotic hand. Design/methodology/approach Details about its implementation are also presented. The AGV is needed to safely navigate inside the factory infrastructure, namely, between the warehouse and the working stations located in the shop-floor or elsewhere. For that purpose, an ActiveONE AGV, from Active Space Automation, was selected. The collaborative robot manipulator is used to move parts from/into the mobile platform (feeding the working stations and removing parts for the warehouse). A cobot from Kassow Robots was selected (model KR 810), kindly supplied by partner companies Roboplan (Portugal) and Kassow Robotics (Denmark). An Arduino MKR1000 board was also used to interconnect the user interface, the AGV and the collaborative robot. The graphical user interface was developed in C# using the Microsoft Visual Studio 2019 IDE, taking advantage of this experience in this type of language and programming environment. Findings The resulting prototype was fully demonstrated in the partner company warehouse (Active Space Automation) and constitutes a possible order-picking solution, which is ready to be integrated into advanced solutions for the factories of the future. Originality/value A solution to fully automate the order-picking task at an industrial shop-floor was presented and fully demonstrated. The objective was to design a system that could be easy to use, to adapt to different applications and that could be a basic infrastructure for advanced order-picking systems. The system proved to work very well, executing all the features required for an order-picking system working in an Industry 4.0 scenario where humans and machines must act as co-workers. Although all the system design objectives were accomplished, there are still opportunities to improve and add features to the presented solution. In terms of improvements, a different robotic hand will be used in the final setup, depending on the type of objects that are being required to move. The amount of equipment that is located on-board of the AGV can be significantly reduced, freeing space and lowering the weight that the AGV carries. For example, the controlling computer can be substituted by a single-board-computer without any advantage. Also, the cobot should be equipped with a wrist camera to identify objects and landmark. This would allow the cobot to fully identify the position and orientation of the objects to pick and drop. The wrist camera should also use bin-picking software to fully identify the shape of the objects to pick and also their relative position (if they are randomly located in a box, for example). These features are easy to add to the developed mobile manipulator, as there are a few vision systems in the market (some that integrate with the selected cobot) that can be easily integrated in the solution. Finally, this paper reports a development effort that neglected, for practical reasons, all issues related with certification, safety, training, etc. A future follow-up paper, reporting a practical use-case implementation, will properly address those practical and operational issues.

Framework for characterizing the design of VMI systems

2007 ◽  
Vol 37 (10) ◽  
pp. 782-798 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikael Ståhl Elvander ◽  
Sami Sarpola ◽  
Stig‐Arne Mattsson
Keyword(s):  
Design Methodology ◽  
Empirical Investigation ◽  
Research Community ◽  
Management Research ◽  
Content Type ◽  
System Configurations ◽  
System Designs ◽  
Industrial Context ◽  
Practical Implications ◽  
Operation And Management

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to provide for the research community as well as for the practitioners measures that enable the evaluation, categorization and comparison of vendor managed inventory (VMI) systems.Design/methodology/approachIn this paper, a framework is developed for characterizing the design of VMI systems based on a review of prior research and an empirical investigation of industry‐to‐industry VMI relationships in Sweden.FindingsThe proposed framework incorporates the main characteristics of VMI systems and serves as a tool for profiling VMI system designs and for facilitating the comparison and analysis of different VMI system configurations.Research limitations/implicationsThe Swedish industrial context in which the framework was tested should be taken into consideration when generalizing upon the findings.Practical implicationsVMI systems come in various shapes and setups, as a result of which the challenges related to their operation and management may differ significantly. This study addresses the issue by providing practitioners with a tool that helps them in the design and management of VMI systems.Originality/valueWhile categorizations and measures for the VMI systems exist in prior research, this study contributes by synthesizing the existing measures and testing them in empirical setting. The study contributes particularly to the research on VMI systems but also more broadly to the supply chain management research.

scholarly journals Throughput models for a dual-bay VLM order picking system under different configurations

2019 ◽  
Vol 119 (6) ◽  
pp. 1268-1288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabio Sgarbossa ◽  
Martina Calzavara ◽  
Alessandro Persona
Keyword(s):  
Design Methodology ◽  
Real Data ◽  
Order Picking ◽  
Analytical Models ◽  
Accurate Estimation ◽  
Throughput Performance ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Storage Assignment ◽  
Particular Solution ◽  
Vertical Lift

Purpose Vertical lift module (VLM) is a parts-to-picker system for order picking of small products, which are stored into two columns of trays served by a lifting crane. A dual-bay VLM order picking (dual-bay VLM-OP) system is a particular solution where the operator works in parallel with the crane, allowing higher throughput performance. The purpose of this paper is to define models for different operating configurations able to improve the total throughput of the dual-bay VLM-OP system. Design/methodology/approach Analytical models are developed to estimate the throughput of a dual-bay VLM-OP. A deep evaluation has been carried out, considering different storage assignment policies and the sequencing retrieval of trays. Findings A more accurate estimation of the throughput is demonstrated, compared to the application of previous models. Some use guidelines for practitioners and academics are derived from the analysis based on real data. Originality/value Differing from previous contributions, these models include the acceleration/deceleration of the crane and the probability of storage and retrieve of each single tray. This permits to apply these models to different storage assignment policies and to suggest when these policies can be profitably applied. They can also model the sequencing retrieval of trays.

Experimental investigation of the magnetorheological polishing process with roller

2018 ◽  
Vol 70 (6) ◽  
pp. 1060-1065 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wanli Song ◽  
Hongliang Li ◽  
Jintao Ma ◽  
Zhichao Hu ◽  
Pei Shi
Keyword(s):  
Surface Roughness ◽  
Experimental Investigation ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Circular Ring ◽  
Polishing Process ◽  
Workpiece Surface ◽  
Content Type ◽  
New Device ◽  
Magnetorheological Polishing ◽  
K9 Glass

Purpose This paper aims to develop a new magnetorheological polishing (MRP) device with roller and investigate the polishing mechanism of MRP fluids using this new device. Design/methodology/approach The principle of MRP process with roller is discussed, and then the structure of the polishing device is designed in detail. The polishing experiments of K9 glass are carried out using MRP device with roller. Findings A series of tests are performed to evaluate the effect of the excitation gaps, working gap and polishing time on the polishing characteristics, and the optimized polishing parameters can be obtained. The surface roughness Ra of the sample is reduced from 359 to 38 nm under optimized polishing parameters. Originality/value MRP method with roller is proposed in this paper, and the MRP device with roller can reduce the surface roughness Ra significantly. After being polished, the circular ring-shaped polishing belt disappears on the workpiece surface, which means it has great potential for polishing.

scholarly journals Human Factors in Order Picking System Design: A Content Analysis

2015 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 320-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric H. Grosse ◽  
Christoph H. Glock ◽  
W. Patrick Neumann
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Human Factors ◽  
System Design ◽  
Order Picking ◽  
Picking System

scholarly journals Development of a Clinical Interface for a Novel Newborn Resuscitation Device: Human Factors Approach to Understanding Cognitive User Requirements

10.2196/12055 ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. e12055 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Pickup ◽  
Alexandra Lang ◽  
Lara Shipley ◽  
Caroline Henry ◽  
James Carpenter ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Heart Rate ◽  
Human Factors ◽  
Interface Design ◽  
Task Analysis ◽  
Cognitive Task ◽  
Unmet Need ◽  
Neonatal Resuscitation ◽  
Cognitive Task Analysis ◽  
User Requirements ◽  
New Device

Background A novel medical device has been developed to address an unmet need of standardizing and facilitating heart rate recording during neonatal resuscitation. In a time-critical emergency resuscitation, where failure can mean death of an infant, it is vital that clinicians are provided with information in a timely, precise, and clear manner to capacitate appropriate decision making. This new technology provides a hands-free, wireless heart rate monitoring solution that easily fits the clinical pathway and procedure for neonatal resuscitation. Objective This study aimed to understand the requirements of the interface design for a new device by using a human factors approach. This approach combined a traditional user-centered design approach with an applied cognitive task analysis to understand the tasks involved, the cognitive requirements, and the potential for error during a neonatal resuscitation scenario. Methods Fourteen clinical staff were involved in producing the final design requirements. Two pediatric doctors supported the development of a visual representation of the activities associated with neonatal resuscitation. This design was used to develop a scenario-based workshop. Two workshops were carried out in parallel and involved three pediatric doctors, three neonatal nurses, two advance neonatal practitioners, and four midwives. Both groups came together at the end to reflect on the findings from the separate sessions. Results The outputs of this study have provided a comprehensive description of information requirements during neonatal resuscitation and enabled product developers to understand the preferred requirements of the user interface design for the device. The study raised three key areas for the designers to consider, which had not previously been highlighted: (1) interface layout and information priority, as heart rate should be central and occupy two-thirds of the screen; (2) size and portability, to enable positioning of the product local to the baby’s head and allow visibility from all angles; and (3) auditory feedback, to support visual information on heart rate rhythm and reliability of the trace with an early alert for intervention while avoiding parental distress. Conclusions This study demonstrates the application of human factors and the applied cognitive task analysis method, which identified previously unidentified user requirements. This methodology provides a useful approach to aid development of the clinical interface for medical devices.

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