VIRTUAL REALITY BASED DIGITAL WORK PROCEDURE

The demand for shortening the in-between period of the model change of products (time competition) has been increasing. Manufacturers are forced to design production systems, prepare work procedures and evaluate workload promptly for responding to this time competition. Accordingly, the present study has developed a tool for an overall support for manufactures from the shortening of a period required for designing production systems to the evaluation of workload. Virtual reality (VR) is used in this tool. The PC screen displays a virtual work area and a human model (mannequin) designed by CAD. The system designer (operator) operates the keyboard and mouth to have the human model perform an assembly operation. When the assembly operation is replayed, an explanation is added and work procedures are prepared. Furthermore, work postures are calculated simultaneously. Then workload is calculated from the work postures. For the evaluation of workload,the OWAS method-based evaluation standard is used. An application verifies the function and validity of this tool.