Work Study System Using Indoor Positioning Technology

This paper presented a new automatic work study system to measure indirect or direct operations in a factory for responding to a labor shortage problem in the present and the future. Requirements of the system are a general-purpose sensing and visualization, inexpensive hardware, and easy user interface to adapt to various Japanese small and medium-sized factories. A time lapse camera and Bluetooth beacons are utilized and combined due to the requirement. As the result of evaluation in an actual factory, the automated system could detect and track both of a worker's location and its time period in enough accuracy and speed only by assigning an input movie data. The system rises alarm to its user about abnormal points in the data where the time period is more than the threshold value estimated statistically. In addition, the tracked worker's move is displayed by a red line in the movie frame for the cause-effect analysis. Furthermore, the tracked worker could be identified using a log data sent by beacon receivers in real-time.