INTEGRATION OF TIME AS A FACTOR IN ERGONOMIC SIMULATION
The Volkswagen Group is facing a big challenge due to a proceeding globalization of markets and an increasing competition. Decreasing product life cycles, the need of flexible production systems and the demographic change demand solutions to assure or rather expand the own competitiveness. Processes have to be created, which assure and support increas-ing demands concerning productivity and quality as well as ergonomics. In this case, an important aspect is the establishment of ergonomic design methods in the product life cycle. Thus it is possible to influence products and processes as soon as possible in order to reduce costs. However, ergonomic evaluations in phase of development and planning are often difficult. The huge amount of different process simulation tools and digital human models constrain a standar-dized examination of ergonomics. Furthermore, existing systems do not providethe possibility to in-clude the intensity as well as the duration of exposure for the calculation of an ergonomic index [1]. Only the intensity of physical exposure has been consi-dered with static methods like RULA, OWAS or NIOSH [5, 10]. Therefore, within a pilot project, the algorithms of the methodEAWS were transferred into an existing digital human model.
