Quote:
Originally Posted by classyfast
Sounds good, but ergonomic aids like this only weaken muscles and teach folks to relay on support devices. What they should do for their workers is invest in nutrition and physical health programs for their folks, Americans are already typically overweight and less physical than generations before, this to me encourages that.
Now if you have a corrective ergonomic device which stops somebody with pressure points or physical alert parameters from doing something like lifting incorrectly, I'm all for it as a teaching device. That's about it.
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You're wrong, these aids will significantly reduce worker injury rates, improve the quality of the product, and reduce cost.
While workforce wellness programs are a great investment, they are not often compulsory and therefore have limited effectiveness. The repetitive stress that employees get from these types of jobs is much different than what you would do as exercise. For example let us assume that the employee has to place each of those small plates in the task at 3:15 in the video. Assume the metal it is picking up is 225 grams (0.5 lb), picked up every 10 seconds. By using the robot BMW is removing 360 cycles and 81 kg (180 lbs) per hour from the worker's responsibilities. The robot also can place that part with a high degree of accuracy and work 24 hours a day if needed.
Note that the employee still has to lift the pre-processed and then the completed part, there are still highly repetitive tasks in this work environment. The robot likely replaced the task that the employees had the most trouble completing which is usually a source of quality defects.