How World Class Ergonomics Programs Are Using Technology

welcome everybody hi I'm indeed we'll get started as usual at the top of the Hour come on in find a seat grab your snacks this is great A lot of interest today fantastic all right it is the top of the hour um hello and welcome everybody my name is Alan Barr with coeh Northern California and on behalf of deny our supported Education and Research centers throughout the country we're pleased to present the 2023 ERC ergonomics webinar Series where we offer free monthly webinars on various topics on human factors and ergonomics this collaborative effort on behalf of each erc's continuing education program aspires to provide access to current research supported through monosh ERC programs thank you so much for joining us today all participants who logged in today with their registration email will receive a link to an evaluation form that will qualify you for a certificate of completion worth one continuing education contact hour please consider joining us on September 20th for our next Ergo webinar which is workplace design considerations for the Aging Workforce and for all you can register for that and other upcoming webinars which there are many at coeh.berkeley.edu forward slash webinars you will be muted during today's webinar if you'd like to ask a question and I encourage you to do so please enter it into the online q a we'll save some time at the end of the presentation to address those questions today's webinar is being recorded and will be made available along with past webinars on the coeh Northern California YouTube Channel please take a moment to like And subscribe to our channel so we can continue to grow today's webinar the title of which is how world-class ergonomics programs are using technology our speaker today is Julia abate Julia is the executive director for the ergonomic Center housed in the Edward p Fitz Department of industrial and system and systems engineering at North Carolina State University she is a certified professional Economist with over 25 years of experience helping companies develop and grow their ergonomics programs she has degrees from the University of Michigan and mechanical industrial and operations engineering Julia is currently a program chair for the applied ergonomics conference and one of the technical vice presidents for The Institute of industrial and systems engineering she also serves on the advisory boards for the iisc transactions on occupational ergonomics and human factors the North Carolina occupational safety and health Education and Research Center and national Safety council's MSD Solutions lab pretty awesome with that introduction Julia I'll hand it over to you thank you Alan and good afternoon before we start I'd like to thank the North Carolina occupational safety health safety and health education and resource center and the other centers listed here for allowing me to speak today and thank you for joining us as we take a look at how some of the companies with world-class ergonomics programs are using technology to more effectively identify and address ergonomic risk in their processes and I was scanning through the participants I think some of you may see some of your companies and some examples um highlighted in here so thank you for those and one click quick disclaimer I've tried to use industry examples throughout the presentation and have referenced the sources accordingly any vendor pictures that are used are for example only um and to imply an endorsement of the product the links that I've provided you should be able to access um and find in the future I mean some of them you can just do a quick Google search on and I'll tell you where we do those so thank you again and we'll get started so first of all let's talk about what it means to be a world-class by looking at a spectrum of programs starting with programs that are in this firefighting mode in firefighting mode injuries are going to be expected some employees have nominal awareness of the basic ergonomic principles and tools issues are typically identified and addressed after they've caused injuries in firefighting programs are typically expert driven and may have slightly oppositional relationships with productivity as we go up the Spectrum a reacting program is going to be one where economic risk is addressed reactively and inconsistently so injuries are often blamed on the employees back in the day it used to be oh the employee didn't use the right work methods instead of what something that might be more of an engineering or a physical fix ergonomic efforts might also be led by EHS on short-term campaigns so it's a part of that overall program but it's not on its own a complying program will take a more formal compliance driven approach to ergonomics they might form an ergonomics team that tackles easy solutions and measures their results execution at this point becomes more consistent and standardized and then in the preventing stage when a program has reached that stage employees are typically understanding the ergonomic principles they're actively applying the tools and what they learn the implementation of program elements is executed more consistently and management is committed to being more proactive often integrating ergonomics into their design guidelines at the world-class stage ergonomics is embedded into the company culture there's usually an implied zero injury goal and leading indicators are tracked to manage risk which is also consistently addressed these programs are typically participatory in nature and they Empower employers to make changes and share best practices typically these world-class programs tend to have a strong proactive policies that avoid introducing new risks of injury into their new systems they capitalize on the fact that when a product or process is in the early stages of design there's funding available and allocated to the development and testing of that product or process the cost to make changes is also much lower when in the design process prior to that physical build as the project moves closer to completion fewer funds are available for changes and once the product or process is built in a manufacturing environment it's not only more costly to implement change but the funding is usually much harder to come by for the purposes of this webinar we're going to break down the technology applications into two categories to reflect the changes made proactively so before that build point and those made reactively after a product or process has been released or in manufacturing so how do these world-class companies use technology to address potential issues prior to that build point most of them are utilizing digital human modeling virtual reality or augmented reality or a combination of all three to test out their designs on their new products and processes virtually and then they also use augmented reality and virtual reality to provide training on those products and processes when it does go into that manufacturing phase so just to make sure everyone is on the same page that virtual reality or VR immerses a user into an alternative Digital World of reality separate from The Real World so we're thinking Matrix or Avatar augmented reality or ar is technology that overlays digital information into the real world or on real world elements examples include heads-up displays or the tracking that's overlaid in Olympic athletes to kind of show viewers at home how that athlete is performing when compared to a world record digital human modeling is used to incorporate ergonomics into early product and process design with or without that augmented on virtual reality Now using digital human modeling helps Engineers identify and address issues involving fit and clearance and reach prior to any equipment being built and this process can save companies millions of dollars in development costs the digital human also allows companies to test out that smaller fifth percentile female and the larger 95th percentile male model to see how they interact with the process and they can test models from different geographical regions where they might have plants in Mexico or Asia and those employees are going to have different statures different sizes so this example comes from Ford's virtual reality lab the immersive VR as Ford calls it allows rapid prototyping throughout design and Engineering development and it also allows Engineers to collaborate remotely Ford has been using digital human modeling for over 20 years and in this example has incorporated 3D printed model of a product design in addition to having Engineers use VR Ford has also been known to bring line operators into the virtual labs to evaluate the Future model assemblies and to identify potential problems the engineers might miss in 2017 Ford reported that since the beginning it's of its virtual manufacturing program they'd reduced overextended movements difficult hand clearances and hard to install parts and new vehicle launches by 90 percent they also reported reducing employee injury and by 70 percent and employee days away from work due to injury by 75 percent Lockheed Martin has also developed their collaborative human immersive laboratory or chill for short it's a virtual 3D simulation lab that allows virtual creation of a spacecraft before the physical creation engineers and technicians can view those 3D models in AR space or step into their creation as avatars to enhance design contacts Concepts and spot and resolve problems before that build phase this means improved performance less cost shorter implementation time and lower risk they also report that the ability to visualize engineering designs in virtual reality offers them a tremendous savings and time and money compared to using physical prototypes and you can search on the Lockheed Martin show Lab through Google and see some short videos on what they're doing Lockheed Martin is also using augmented reality to develop instructional manuals that include animations for the Assembly of spacecraft components they report significant decreases in the amount of time it took to employees for them to interpret those instructions and they reported reduced training Time by 85 percent and increased productivity by over 40 percent and then John Deere's another company that's been using virtual reality to optimize the design of attractors by displaying the steps in the build processes and the engineers were checking for tooling and other clearances and key design features in that virtual environment before that product goes to production this allows them to tweak the design and make sure employees and Manufacturing are accommodated and can build the product without running into any problems so why isn't everybody using AR and VR and digital human modeling well there are many challenges involved with implementation cost is always the number one factor to consider in anything especially with emerging technology and business there's also a significant investment needed in the technology Hardware the software and the talent Lockheed Martin estimated that their initial cost to set up their chill lab in 2010 was five million dollars now once you get the lab set up it also takes skilled and trained employees to run it and maintain it and there are costs associated with finding training and keeping those resources from a data accuracy standpoint these systems are some of the most accurate systems available however some of the graphics are not all equal and they leave the users a little skeptical the hand models and the Hand interface for example if the hand is grasping a tool they usually have a little bit of a challenge because that might overlap with the tool so some of the users don't feel it's accurately depicting what they're doing process integration in order for AR and VR or digital human modeling to work they need to be integrated into that design process where it becomes not an optional tool but a required validation step in the process and doing this takes time and it takes a dedicated effort from management and lastly data storage and processing the data that's generated is huge and the processing power that's needed to analyze this data can take some major Computing effort and it's not inexpensive finding ways to amass all the data make sense of it provide it for the end users at a reasonable price is still an ongoing challenge with all these changes why are people using it well using arv or in digital human modeling reduces the need for that physical prototype and it can keep those development costs down in the long run they're also able the engineers are able to use those designs to design for manufacturability and maintainability so designing for that up front and reducing the potential costs for and the feature costs of any retrofits I was talking to you my nephew this weekend who is maintaining Humvees and some of the designs of the the structures there just to change the oil are very challenging for them to do they have to remove several bolts some of that armored plating just to change the oil um so there are considerations in our designs that we can make up front in that virtual environment for that maintainability and manufacturability that will affect things in the long run of the product and those virtual designs also allow Engineers to try out different scenarios and layouts and determine which one is going to work best from a productivity and a quality standpoint overall the companies that are adopting these Technologies are really a very realizing a positive return on investment not just with injury prevention but in Time Savings productivity improvements quality improvements and employee retention going back to Lockheed Martin's chill lab well it costs five million dollars to set up in 2010 they estimate that they're saving 10 million dollars a year by implementing the technology in the production line of just their space assets so the company's already seen a significant return on its investment and will continue to do so what about companies that can't make that large investment up front how can they use technology albeit in a more reactive way well the first place most companies typically start is with training we've mentioned using augmented and virtual reality for training but when other ways to use short video segments to train workers on a specific task for Content like ergonomic risk factors why is this something to consider technology is making it easier for anyone to create these types of tutorials and if you think about it what's the first thing you've done you do when you need to do a task you've never done before excuse me let's say you need to change the handle on a toilet what's the first thing you do pop that in the chat for me Alan can we can we see the chats I know there we go I can uh it should be showing I just dropped an answer in there for you because that's exactly what I was looking for I I completely understand that yep so the first thing we do we don't reach for the instruction books anymore we Google it and we look at it on YouTube and find some videos on how to do it and you know guess what the younger Generations have grown up with that model according to gallup's research Millennials are expected to represent 75 percent of the U.S Workforce by 2025. they respond best to visual forms of learning they expect short concise quality videos I get them on YouTube that's what they expect in the workplace so one great example of this approach comes from Davonna pilchick Dr Davonna pilchik who is currently the ergonomics program manager at Cintas she led a project with her previous team at Gulfstream where they produced several short engaging creative videos on ergonomic concepts for employees including one that I'm going to highlight here and play for you where the concept being taught is at the primary work zom is from shoulder to mid thigh and makes a capital i made these two to three minute videos for their employees and posted them on YouTube so anyone can access them by searching Gulfstream ergonomics I encourage you to take a look at them and either use them or be inspired to create some of your own and I'll pop this over here and play it for you real quick Aerospace and I'm here today to teach you a lesson in ergonomics on how to identify awkward posture all you need is your old masking tape and a volunteer and today we're going to be using our intern for Rachel Ortega chair off three different states about shoulder width and length tape across the shoulders down the center of the body and across the middle of the thigh when you're done it should look like a capital letter I shoulder to the thigh makes a capital left letter I this is known as your power Zone the power zone is the area of the body where you are strong August and least likely to be injured now here's how you identify an awkward posture if the person has to work above the shoulder line with the hands elbows or arms that's not good these positions place a lot of stress on the rotator cuff that the person has to work below mid thigh like moving boxes or picking things off the floor that places a lot of stress on the back finally you want to keep work close to the center of the body as it reduces stress on the shoulders and the back the further the work more stress on the body so remember shoulder to mid thigh makes a capital I that's your power Zone and that's where you want to work so that's just a quick example of some short little videos that engages employees on a concept and teaches them something um I know there's several other companies out there that have done this for their workforces as well and with the Millennials it's becoming important they want short concise training and we see a lot of turnover with Millennials if they're not happy with the job they're not afraid to move on I mean that's going to play into a little bit when we have a discussion at the end here but um they look for that short concise training so the traditional approaches that we've had don't always work the arbr short videos those are more engaging for them and they retain that a lot better now when it comes to evaluating the ergonomic risk of existing jobs there can be many challenges in today's Workforce unless you're working in a more traditional assembly line overall that job and task complexity have increased and many jobs are requiring work and awkward postures can find or restricted work areas or with greater degrees of Mobility these are areas where traditional ergonomic Solutions might not be as practical in challenging Industries like construction service and utilities maintenance Aerospace and shipbuilding you kind of you get the idea there so traditionally when ergonomists go into doing an evaluation they collect data using the tools you see here they're manually writing down job tasks videotaping the work taking measurements with tape measures Force gauges and there are strengths and their limitations to this observation-based approach especially in some of these challenging locations you typically need a skilled practitioner or some other trained resource who's developed the skill set to recognize evaluate and control the ergonomic risks in the workplace there can also be concerns around the subjectivity and the accuracy of the data when the measurements are not conducted by a skilled professional and lastly the traditional methods take time and they can cause some Interruption to workers even though getting their input is extremely important so the question is is there a better way and a lot of companies have started using several different options but one of them being wearable sensor technology combined with machine learning and data analytics to understand the kinematics of employees on the job these wearable devices can track the postures and movements of employees while they're wearing the sensors and with covid-19 they also integrated proximity and location sensors into their technology so they can measure and track social distancing or contact tracing purposes some of these devices also provide haptic feedback so an employee bends or twists to a certain degree or with kobit when they were six feet apart it'll provide them some type of haptic feedback and they can adjust their behavior as far as ergonomics goes wearable devices are being used to track time spent sitting standing walking climbing driving even tripping while also noted noting all the high-risk pocketures like bending or twisting of the back and again providing the haptic feedback so that the user can correct their behavior some of these devices go a step further and detect environmental factors like temperature humidity air quality barometric pressure and Noise so our knowledge many of the vendors of these products have conducted and posted internal case studies with their clients however there are um there although there are some studies underway we've yet to see that published longitudinal study conducted by a third party like a university that shows the long-term injury reduction and other metrics after introducing the wearable technology this is one example of one of those companies that's provided a case study or done a case study on wearables in 2020 Marisol barrero who is currently the global ergonomics manager at Amazon web services she was previously with Toyota and she reported that Toyota conducted a study at their Indiana production plant where they had 120 employees using wearable sensors over a two-month spam they reported that the wearables provided a safety score that was essentially automated which reduced their time to complete assessments on those jobs by 95 percent when compared to the manual approaches they also reported that 83 of the employees who use the wearable devices improved their lifting techniques showing that overall reduction of 50 using their proprietary risk assessment tool so they saw some benefits to using those wearables some companies are also moving forward with computer vision technology to help automate or semi-automate ergonomic risk assessments and there are several different companies that produce this AI computer vision and data analytics for ergonomics analysis a lot of them basically take a video from your smartphone update it load it to a cloud the software processes the video automates some type of risk assessment with inputs and outputs and then try to help streamline that automatic that assessment process and there are pros and cons to this solution as well this tool allows for assessment of jobs in a quicker time frame than traditional methods and it's less intrusive to workers there are also some more some better visuals depicting those risks that are present on the job and the videos and assessments can typically be done by novice employees I do want to throw out some caution though we actually conducted a pilot study funded by a grant through the North Carolina occupational safety and health education and resource center and the um pilot study tested the accuracy of several of the commercially available products and we found that they were not as accurate as some of the vendors say um especially when the joint State questions are obscured this graph shows some of the results but with the discrepancies we found in the niosh lifting equation which was used to evaluate a simple lift if you're interested Jeff Hoyle who ran a study provided an overview of the results in another recorded webinar which can be found in the link here which I'll provide um to those who request with the the Powerpoints and this is just another example of when you can't see the The Joint in question then the computer vision basically can't analyze it so the results are not always complete in that specific way um and another thing to consider is that it's the same with manual if the video analysis will only evaluate the employee that it's recorded performing the task without consideration for employees of smaller or larger Dimensions who might have different body angles when doing that same task when all of a sudden done though these challenges haven't stopped companies from using computer vision technology to identify risk quickly even though some of granos Will question the validity of the results and there is work being done to make this technology more accurate in the long run another way companies are addressing the data gains through those video based computer vision systems is to incorporate them with wearable Technologies so bringing the two together the data collected with the wearable sensors and computer vision can also then be integrated with other biomechanics and ergonomic software packages like the digital human modeling tools we talked about and there are studies on the validity of this combined technology both in the lab and in field settings next we have cobots or computer-controlled robotic devices designed to assist a person these are typically utilized as an engineering control in industry and working with and not in lieu of the worker kobots can complete those tasks that are repetitive or require more physical effort than is safe for the worker to do and this is one example of how L'Oreal is using cobots to do the heavy lifting at a facility in India the cobots were implemented to reduce the risk of injury to the workers however they reported that using the cobots also increased efficiency at the plant where the cobots could take and load two pallets at a time and they had a reduced change over time another technology that has seen a lot of growth in ergonomics is the exoskeleton which is defined as a wearable device that augments enables assists or enhances motion posture or physical activity through mechanical interaction with the body and the one you see is a little clunky because it's a generic Adobe stock photo some of them are very streamlined some of them are very robust depending on whether it's an active or a passive exoskeleton and which joint or joints it's helping with so they can Target anything from the legs the back the shoulders full body the fingers there's this industry is just growing very quickly most of the early adopters of this technology manufacturing are treating exoskeletons as a form of PPE and instituting them for specific job tasks where no other viable engineering controls have been deemed feasible Toyota is one company that's adopted to incorporate some of these exoskeletons and as you can see the technology journey is a very long-term commitment and if you guys I encourage you Marshall has a uh recording out there talking about their Journey um the passwords that successful implementation of exoskeletons can take years and companies have to not only identify the job tasks that would benefit from using it but they also have to determine which type of exoskeleton to use every job is going to be different in the technology that works for one might not meet the constraints of the other Dr Christopher Reed has shared that it took Boeing several years to design a process to test and Implement exoskeletons in their facilities if you're thinking about using exoskeletons there are some considerations you might want to make first of all is a nexoskeleton the best option or can it take the task in question or can can the tasking question be addressed with an engineering control how much will it cost per person can the exoskeleton be sized for everyone using it how much time will it take to train the employees to use the exoskeletons and will it be optional or mandatory will the employees buy into the use of the exoskeleton how much time will it take to take it on and off do you how will you maintain it and if something breaks what's the process for fixing it and what happens in the meantime to that job who's going to clean the exoskeleton and where will it be stored when it's not in use Boeing has developed an in-depth process for the use of exoskeletons that encompasses all of these questions and more and it's taken them years to fine-tune and Implement throughout their sites and Dr Reed is also involved in the ASTM effort to create standards around the use of exoskeleton technology to make sure they're safe effective and designed with the user in mind so the standardization of exoskeleton testing allows companies to compare results across products and with other companies minimizing that duplication of effort and variation and results so let's discuss the adoption challenges for these more reactive Technologies cost again is the first one well typically less than that AR or VR or digital human modeling these Technologies also come with the price especially since the wearables of exoskeletons usually have to be provided to each employee in that Target area you also want to make sure you have worker buy-in most workers don't like the thought of Big Brother watching them especially when it comes to using wearables and vision systems so it's important to address that issue if you plan on implementing those Technologies successfully scalability of deployment for the most part exoskeletons computer vision and wearable sensors are designed for a single person and also with vision systems many companies have restrict a restrict video recording rules or need special permissions which can hinder some of that adoption and scalability however a lot of the wearable sensors can be deployed across multiple people at once to collect data and there are some efforts to use the vision system computer vision systems to assist in multiple to assess those multiple people at once and then data accuracy I mentioned you know we're not quite sold on all of the accurate claims um some of them are better than others we do think there's a lot of potential especially with the machine learning algorithms and as that AI improves with more data but we do need to see some third-party validation testing done with that and then the data security and privacy is always of interest to Executives in HR especially when there's videos of employees and risk metrics and they're being stored in a Cloud Server somewhere um however the large companies are using this technology with cloud-based systems and they're becoming more secure so this is working itself out a little bit and the benefits to these Technologies if we can do that risk prioritization faster if we can identify those risks and prioritize them and address them that in turn will increase that worker safety a lot of times we get stuck in that analysis paralysis and that's why a lot of the computer vision systems even though they might not be 100 accurate they're good enough to to help you identify some of those risky jobs and fix them and spend your time with the solutions and lastly there's the opportunities that can lead to increases in productivity especially with the use of cobots and some of the exoskeletons so there are many more opportunities for applications of these Technologies and health and safety and ergonomics and Industry the first one is going to be hiring on we can have a better understanding of the physical demands of a job and the functional capacities of the individuals and in doing so that can help with employee placement also involving employees in that new technology shows that the company cares about them and cares about the exposures and wants to help optimize those jobs at an individual level that can also lead to that increased Employee Engagement and retention especially with the Millennials the Millennials want to they want to impact the vision of the company they want to impact not just the bottom line but they want to make a difference and they they really want to resonate with the visions and missions of a company and feel like they're leaving their marks so involving those Millennials in that technology and having them use it when they're training it just engages them more and gets more of that buy-in um and with training you know it can be very beneficial to use that technology on the job showing them the risks reminding them of ways to avoid it whether you're using an AR VR setting or you're using short tutorials um but training that training can have an impact in the future job prioritization we could be using the data analytics and Predictive Analytics to determine priorities for addressing existing risk in the workforce by collecting and integrating risk factors on the job with other data that's already tracked and measured things like injuries accidents near misses bottlenecks quality issues employee complaints in most companies this information is siled and each of the respective departments to our knowledge no one is using that data collectively so if the metrics for quality and productivity and safety in ergonomics were all tied together if all of those data points can be analyzed in a cohesive manner think of how that would affect businesses highlighting jobs that are having issues in all those areas so they can be addressed because typically a job that's an ergonomic problem is also seeing problems in quality in productivity and in all of those other key measures so if we can bring all that data together and address it then we can avoid making those same mistakes in the future from a job assessment standpoint obviously the use of validated technology to conduct job assessments has the potential to help increase the speed and the accuracy of job assessments and won't require as much training as or expertise to do so the one thing missing from some of these computer vision systems right now is forced data collection or the ability to predict forces being applied and there are some researchers that have started to go down this road um specifically that we know of Purdue and a University of Wisconsin Madison they're using computer vision systems to estimate Force exertions Through facial recognition software so there's growth down that path and work is also being done to develop multi-factorial risk models and cumulative exposure models so having a better understanding of the interactions between that physical or biomechanical Factor the individual or personal factor and then that social or psychosocial factor is key to better prevention in the long run these types of Technology developments will help us do just that and help us assess that cumulative exposure to the the worker in the workplace throughout the course of their entire you know not just day or week but they're in the course of their child life so those are the tools that in the future if we can bring all of that stuff together we have components for each of each of those but we need to bring them together in a cohesive fashion and when less time is spent on analysis more can be directed towards optimizing the best solutions for controls predictive analysis could be used to generate Solutions and return on investment models and there's some movement on this front as well and lastly technology is all about using data to make informed decisions which allows us to better evaluate our overall programs cultures and continuous improve continuously improve it Based on data with these emerging Technologies so with the vast growth in emerging technology Fields it's important to get involved in understanding and developing various Technologies to advance our field and there's a lot of potential out there in the future if you're considering some of these new technologies within your economics programs a few thoughts come to mind consider which technology is going to address your low-hanging fruit and provide the biggest impact for you don't recreate that wheel if you don't have to take the time to do some research see what others are doing out there some of the companies that I've mentioned find out what's working and what isn't and what process considerations might be needed and then conduct a cost and benefit analysis when you do don't use just injury data look at the impact that technology might have on other key measures like quality and productivity and you're likely to get more buy-in from your stakeholders and then try it before you buy it I really like to encourage folks take the time you know do that research and then do a pilot study make sure that the technology is the right technology for your problem and that it's going to provide the solutions and the benefits you expect without any unintended consequences pilot studies also allow you to get that employee input and buy-in early on so we want to try it you know get it out there make sure that it is going to help and do what you want it to do before you expand it and then the cool Factor just because it's cool doesn't need mean you need it or that it's the right solution for your problem but that's it can still be cool it can still be out there it can still be something neat it just might not be what you need um so you want to find that technology that's going to address your issues and a great place to start and get some ideas I encourage you as the applied ergonomics conference we've been the sponsors for 20 years of the ergonomics cup the Ergo cup competition that's held there this competition allows companies to Showcase successful projects and programs and it's a great opportunity to learn from and network with others if you can't attend or you want to see what it's about check out or Google the aec or applied ergonomics conference Ergo cup and you'll find several videos out there with compilations of past participants to show you some of the the example projects that have been done um this is one example from this year for a Tesla super tub so their design Engineers use that digital human modeling to design a single piece casting that replaced 70 parts and fastening elements they replaced 300 welding and fastening robots and a number of stamping and Welding processes it improved the ergonomics conditions and avoided injury cost by over three hundred eighty thousand dollars per year and had labor Savings of over seven dollars a vehicle so they reduced their manufacturing costs by 40 percent improved their rear crash performance and their noise and vibration and harshness so all of these key measures are not just injuries you know they they did this solution they used their digital human modeling and it was in parts to affect ergonomics but they looked at all of these other key measures to justify their change and that's typically what you'll see happen is if you address an ergonomic issue there should be some good benefits there because when you design things correctly for the employee to be able to work and design that human system right to their capabilities it should positively impact your productivity your quality and all your other key measures um so this actually won the Ergo cup for engineering driven workplace solution category and another place to check out is the national Safety council's resources um this is part of their MSD Solutions lab which was sponsored by Amazon but there's a ton of great great professionals on there um and we're all kind of working together and NSC is coordinating and putting together some different infographics and resources out there they've also provided some grants and they recently announced their Grant recipients um they've done some grants to Industry and Academia and these grants Sun around the application or validation of different Technologies so Rutgers won a grant to implement an automated image capturing system designed to help employers better identify ergonomic risk factors and real-time Solutions Iowa state was awarded a grant to develop a predictive model in an ai-based ergonomics app for risk assessment and mitigation that will enable Employers in high-risk Industries to understand shoulder muscular skeletal disorder risk in different scenarios impacting their workers with and without an exoskeleton so they can make more informed decisions and then Virginia Tech was awarded a grant to implement inexpensive camera-based marketless sensors along with machine learning models to assess worker physical exposure and MSD risks more efficiently accurately and comprehensively and then Waterloo was the last um university awarded a grant to generate evidence-based guidance on computer vision based MSD Risk Technology in the workplace so employers can better determine their optimal approach and timing for integrating computer vision-based MSD risk assessment tools and their programs so you hear and there you hear the exoskeletons you hear the computer-based vision assessments Ai and predictive models these are all those Technologies so the reason I list these is because all of these um universities and several companies that were awarded grants to do pilot studies with computer vision and exoskeletons all of these Award winners will be reporting the results of their research in the coming year or so so keep an eye out for that these are all kind of at the Forefront and these are actually um these grants allow not only new developments but also kind of validation of some of these Technologies in industry and wherever you might fall on the Spectrum just know that it takes time and purposeful effort and planning to get to that world-class level you want to keep in mind that Millennials our new up-and-coming Workforce are more safety conscious remember they're going to be 75 of the workforce in 2025. according to that Gallup poll so we want to keep our Workforce and they're setting a higher bar than previous generations they want to know that companies take their personal safety seriously and if they don't see that you're at least kind of at that compliant level they want to look elsewhere for employment so if you're using or planning to use technology in your program involve them involve your Workforce engage them utilize their talents and show them that you're willing to invest in their safety and in summary you know no matter what the industry where all those world-class companies are using technology to increase the effectiveness of their ergonomics programs proactively when possible that's ideal or reactively when not and there's no one magic solution but if you take the time to plan and test and implement the right solution for your company and the work that you do you can make an impact not only to your employees but to that bottom line so just a quick thank you and shout out to all of these Resource Centers if you haven't check out some of the the research that they've sponsored and some of the webinars they have as additional resources too and Alan we can take any questions thank you Julia excellent presentation that was a great Roundup of some of this technology and uh I think if you would like there are a lot of links here if people are interested you can request a copy of the talk in PDF format I posted into the chat an email address it's c-o-e-h-c-e at berkeley.edu that's

coeh-c-e at berkeley.edu again it's in the chat and if you would like a copy please request through that address directly and we'll get that to you because there were definitely a lot of excellent resources in here um yes questions if you have any uh let's see now the first question that came in was what are some of the leading indicators you're tracking that was uh popped in early in the talk uh around the VR AR but I think it's um perhaps just a more general question of some good examples of leading indicators some so when you're in that design stage one of the things you might look for is if you're doing assessments or you're looking at designs and you have ergonomic criteria listed within your designs you want to look at those how many um how many job tasks coming up as green or come up as safe for ergonomics what percentage of those jobs and functions are you allowing to go into the production stage that are not green or safe and now what's the percentage of most people places use red yellow green high moderate low whatever whatever your criteria are but what percentage of the job tasks that make it through that gate are not at that green you know do you start off at like I think forage number I said you know 90 of their issues were resolved before before they they moved on so of the reaches and clearances so that's one way to track a leading indicator on the manufacturing side a lot of people will do that with um you can do that with risk too and how much um risk is out there to begin with but the training you know that's more of a yeah how much of a Workforce is trained how much of them know what the word ergonomics means um those are some of the things anything that is before an injury occurs anything that you're doing proactively is going to be that leading indicator once that injury occurs those injuries are those lagging so the the days away from work that we typically track in safety the injuries you know those are the things that we want to we don't want to get there so we want to find those metrics that come before that and typically it's going to be your risk assessments how much risk have you reduced out in the workplace or how much have you not allowed to seep into the workplace from your design standpoint right we still have some time for some more questions if you have any please throw them in the Q a box if you have your hand raised a couple people do for a question or comment please just drop them into the Q a box so that I can present them uh on your behalf um a participant attendee wanted to know if uh you could talk about any of this technology that you mentioned being used specifically in refining in the oil and gas industry do you not know anything about that I don't know of any specifics I haven't um most of our well I haven't worked with an oil gas client in a long time and I haven't seen any presentations recently but I would guess um Hazard to Guess that there are probably some some ripe opportunities for some of those exoskeletons if that is something that would work it depends on the task because some of those jobs if some of those exo cell Sons can't get 30 some of them can um you know it just it depends on the task that you're doing so I would if you're interested in that contact some vendors and have them see what what are the criteria that you need to meet and see if some of their exoskeletons will work in that situation and a lot of them are really good about giving demos and showing you things um and if you go to some of these conferences um where Khan is one and the flight ergonomics conference where you see some of these exoskeletons and they'll let you try them and you can have some of those discussions there too um somebody asked if you know of any products that use the video based assessment that doesn't involve the cloud because they have I.T issues whether it be security or just trying to get through the I.T walls most of the ones that I've we've used have typically involved that cloud I don't there's a couple that we've not played with yet um so I I don't want to throw out any that we haven't done but I would when you call them that might be the first question you ask say you know do you have one that that does not where do you store your data and is there any way that it can be stored within our um systems and their data Integrity in the cloud you know a lot of these companies are used to dealing with those I.T

barriers roadblocks hurdles whatever you might want to call them so they might have some solutions we didn't have we didn't ask that because when we were testing them out but I think if you would ask the um the vendors and just make what's just say What's Your solution to this and most of them will probably work with you very very easily right it's a comment came in it says with the documented AI biases we should be careful with products that use machine learning and I I I'll use that comment to jump off into a bigger uh concept which I think is uh is there a way we could formalize this sort of Do no harm philosophy into this new technology as we explore this and we get ahead of ourselves we get all this technology um we don't want to inadvertently introduce you know solve one problem and introduce an unknown a new problem and can you speak to that that I mean that's a huge ethical issue right now I think even within Academia we've got professors who have said you can't use AI chat or your fail and then we've got others that say all the students are going to be using it anyways so how can we teach them how to use it properly and teach them where the the where the systems are great and where they're not so great um and that you know what data can they trust because it's it that the implementation of that type of technology is just skyrocketing and I don't think the standards and um rules around it are going to start keeping up that's why with Dr Reed with ASTM standard for exoskeletons that I mean that model is excellent because we've got a a group of knowledgeable professionals who are basically keeping the interest of the worker in mind as these Technologies go and they're designing standards to keep those exoskeletons safe and making sure that they're not creating other issues for the worker they're not moving you know the load from the back to the shoulders or the shoulders to the back and just transferring that load so they're coming around with these standards I think we need that in some of these other Technologies I don't think they're all there um and that that's why we with the computer vision systems you know that's why we encourage you to try it some of them are better than others um some of them have strengths in some area and weaknesses in others so make sure that whatever solution you want to try try it out take get a job do an assessment try it out and make sure that it's going to work for you some people think that the um the accuracy issue isn't that bad and as long as it points them in the direction of where that risk is they're good with that and they just want to know which jobs do I need to analyze others want to be more precise so it depends what your ultimate goal is because there's no one policing those right now um okay uh we've got time for a couple more here um are we question is are we introducing new safety risks when we use when we use cobots in the workplace um can you give an example of cobot implementation that you're aware of most of the cobots that I've worked with we have actually a lab here a manufacturing Lab at the University um and they they work with cobots all the time and most of them have some of those safety features embedded in them um they're designed to be working with people not not the old robots that we used to have that had to be gated and everything around it so um again that's something that that you want to Pilot and try out um ask the vendors what are the precautions that are programmed into those pieces of equipment but cobots in general are designed to work with with people and you know together not to be boarded off so are there risks there's still probably risks in there but they've been minimized um to an extent again depending on the vendor that you use so got you somebody's asked if um you know any good in-person ergonomic training I would always say yes but we do offer um ergonomics training also a lot of the um each OSHA region has training centers um the region four which was where North Carolina happens to be a another group within NC State and they still offer a lot of safety training in person and one component that they also offer is the OSHA 2255 principles of ergonomics class and that is formatted a little differently across the regions but they each have uh you know qualified group to to teach that class and so that if you need some have somebody who needs a quick basic introduction to ergonomics that's one way to do it it's usually a three to five day class and I should say 18 hours to 30 hours depending on where you go that you could usually take live excellent well I since somebody asked I will put in a plug for us you can check out our coeh website and you can see that we have a summer Institute which is really in-depth um ergonomics training with some high level operators um we just it just concluded for this year but uh feel free to sign up for next year if you're in the Bay Area from Northern California area or not too far away come on over uh okay each of them each of the centers has one of those right um I know the North Carolina one does too so I think they all offer some type of oh good I I don't know the answer to that but uh there's that certainly is something that you can look up yeah um somebody asks if you feel that PPE is the best category for exoskeletons is that where we should be putting them considering them as PPE most of the folks that I've worked with do I I personally do um just because it's it's really you're not physically changing the job you're not physically changing making an engineering change to the work you're not reducing the risk you're reducing kind of the exposure to the person by using that PPE um for me when I consider engineering controls as I am changing the function that job and reducing that risk I am changing the job tasks where you know the PPE is like you know you put a glove on when you have to you still have to handle something hot so you but you put that heat resistant glove on so to me that's exoskeletons do fall on that PPE um now all companies do view them as that but a lot of them do and that also I think they do that because then they can tell the employee in order to do this job you're required to wear that PPE and that makes it kind of more of a you know a way to enforce if you will but you know this job requires this PPE when it's being done so thank you um question do you think it's just more of your opinion I suppose it's really uh do you think it's valid to use the mobile mobile ergonomic apps for research work the computer vision systems uh they weren't specific but I imagine something like the computer vision uh maybe the posture recognition [Music] um there was no context there beyond that question if it's been it's whatever if it's a validated technology and it's it's proven I would not use it for research unless it's been proven I know a lot of folks kind of do the duel they'll do the the cameras the wearables and the the phones um and NC State also has on I forget where the source is on one of the free sources and I'll include that in the in the PowerPoint but they have a lot of their data that they collected with the the biomechanics camera camera system they downloaded that data so that you could compare it to some of the um so the developers of the apps could compare it to what they're getting um so there's some free source information out there but I would be hesitant to use it for research until you know that it's something that's been validated yeah that sounds like a Sound Advice okay last question do you know of any uh surgery environments where this is being used where surgeons may have to adopt a awkward posture for a long period of time I personally don't I know that the um I want I want to say that the Mayo Clinic was looking into some some different types of but don't quote me on that but some different types of Technologies some of them were more like the AR um I was talking to I don't remember who it was a doctor that was saying they were starting to they were looking to using the AR VR so that a remote doctor who might be in another location could put on you know the glasses and help the surgeon who might not be maybe an expert in that that area complete the surgery so you know if uh the surgeon's doing going in and doing um I don't know stomach surgery and has a heart issue it needs a heart specialist who can't get there they could kind of remote in with that augmented or virtual reality and walk them through that process um so I think the medical industry is looking into that I can't speak exactly to how or what um all right well hey thank you Julia we did run out of time and that was an excellent presentation I'm if I didn't get your question I apologize feel free to reach out to us for a copy of today's presentation in the PDF format and also if you're logged in with your registration email you'll get a link to an evaluation form that will qualify you for an hour of continuing education uh contact hour again that emails cohce berkeley.edu if you have any questions a big thank you to our presenter and to all of you who joined us today we'll catch you on the next one by Julia

2023-08-27 19:35

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