Högskolan i Skövde

Ergonomics evaluation methods are typically used for assessing risks of work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) and the physical well-being of workers. Traditionally, these methods rely on assessors observing workers performing tasks and assessing potential risks based on observational ergonomics evaluation methods like the Rapid Entire Body Assessment (REBA) and the Rapid Upper Limb Assessment (RULA). While observational methods provide a structured risk assessment framework, they often depend on subjective evaluations, leading to inconsistent assessments between different ergonomists.

This study examines the application of motion capture technology to enhance the objectivity and efficiency of ergonomics evaluations and to enable the use of direct measurement ergonomics evaluation methods. The study was conducted at a medium-sized enterprise assembly station, where a worker’s tasks were recorded using motion capture technology. The captured motions were input into the Digital Human Modelling (DHM) tool IPS IMMA, and ergonomic assessments were performed using RULA, REBA, and the Arm Force Field (AFF) method.

The study followed a process comprising three main stages: data collection, data processing, and ergonomics evaluation. The recorded data were processed into XML format, imported into IPS IMMA, and exported to the Ergonomics in Production Platform (EPP) for RULA and REBA evaluations and to a script for AFF evaluations. The integration of these methods improved the precision and reliability of ergonomics assessments by replacing subjective estimates with direct measurements. The findings demonstrate the potential of combining motion capture with DHM tools to enhance ergonomics evaluation and support decisionmaking in workstation design and automation.

In recent years Mixed Reality technology has been widely used to enhance operators in manual assembly operations. This paper introduces a Mixed Reality environment for assembly operations and describes how the process can be supported by virtual sensors. The structure of the environment allows seamless adaption from a fully virtual training scenario, only using virtual assets, to a full production scenario supporting operators in assembling physical products in actual production. The training system which has been developed together with the company Skandia Elevator in Sweden enables the operators to train with much less disturbance to the real production line compared to training using the actual production equipment. In fact, the training can be done only using virtual assets.

In this paper we discuss the results of two extensive case studies targeted towards Swedish SMMEs, partly aimed at investigating the current state of practice regarding the strategic work in the companies and its alignment to digitalization initiatives. The case studies were conducted during 2022 and 2023 and includes a vast empirical material, including several site visits, more than 30 interviews, several meetings with the managerial boards of the two companies and workshops, as well as studies of strategic document, product portfolios and Gemba walks. The paper presents a suggestion for how to formulate a one-page digital strategy, which aligns the digitalization initiative with the overall strategy of the company, as well as a vision for the digital transformation initiative. In addition, the one-pager also includes prioritized stakeholder groups, expected effects and prioritized activities. Moreover, we also motivate the reasons behind a one-pager, as well as the topics included therein. Finally, we give some ideas for future work, including the importance of implementing the one-pager in more companies, as a way to further validate its applicability and long-term influence on and relevance for the strategic work in SMMEs. 

This paper presents a Mixed reality (MR) environment to support industrial cobots programming for welding purposes. Several intuitive menus allow a user to program the path, which can be configured and simulated in the virtual environment with reachability checking. A guide can be activated to show recommended steps and allows validation of the created program on the virtual robot to aid the learning process. The MR application is integrated with a robot programming platform and a robot controller, that allows the user to test paths on a real robot. Moreover, results from spatial accuracy and user experience evaluations are presented.

In this paper, the 206 papers published at the Swedish Production Symposium (SPS) conferences in 2018, 2020, and 2022 have been analyzed, primarily focusing their relationship to the six industrial challenges identified by Produktion2030. Based on the analysis, ten in-depth interviews with representatives from the Swedish Production Academy (SPA) and industry have been done. These interviews have reflected on the analysis of the papers from the SPS conferences as well as progress during the years of the SPS conferences. The emergence and implementation of the SPS conferences have a similar time span as the Vinnova program Produktion2030. The analysed papers indicate that the focus and development directions of the two have been similar, but not completely overlapping. The close collaboration between academia and industry in Swedish production research is clearly shown by the papers and indicated through an alignment with the industrial challenges indicated by Produktion2030. Of all the papers, 2/3 clearly state such collaboration, and the interviews indicate that the extent of the collaboration is even more extensive than that. The findings from the analysis also include the distribution of research funders involved, gender distribution among authors, and where they are from. Two findings that stand out are the need to more clearly state funding bodies for the published research and to also state more clearly in the papers how, in what way, and with whom the researchers collaborated. 

This paper presents a Mixed Reality (MR) approach to extend the Safe Move tool from ABB Robot Studio (RS) to view and intuitively edit the safety configuration, allowing the import of existing configurations and the export of modified ones to RS for certification by the expert. The added virtual sensor can detect the user's position allowing collision detection and avoidance. The robot's motion is not only adjusted to the safety zone in which the robot is but also to its relative position to the operator by monitoring in real-time positions of the operator’s hands as well as head and triggering appropriate action in the robot.

Augmented reality smart glasses (ARSG) have been successfully used as operator support in production. However, their use is not yet widespread, likely in part due to a lack of knowledge about how to integrate ARSG into production. This lack of knowledge can also make it hard to estimate whether this is a worthwhile investment. Our solution is to provide an online evaluation tool to help production planners estimate the likelihood that ARSG will be worth the investment cost in specific production cases. Based on a strawman design, multiple design iterations were followed by a pilot test performed by participants from different manufacturing companies involved in planning production for operators. A Likert scale survey was used to evaluate the tool. The results show a slightly positive evaluation of the tool with suggestions for improvement, including widening the scope and granularity of the tool. Future works include further iterations and case studies.

Dagens situation, med mycket snabb teknisk utveckling samt globaliserings- och hållbarhetsfrågor som påtagligt påverkar vårt samhälle omkullkastar många av de tidigare sanningar som format bilden av högre utbildning i allmänhet och utbildning som är arbetsmarknadsanknuten i synnerhet. Ett gällande synsätt där yrkesliv följer kronologiskt efter en inledande utbildningsfas i unga människors liv blir allt merdaterad. Begreppet ”det livslånga lärandet” omfattar ett synsätt där utbildning ochyrkesliv verkar växelvis under ett helt arbetsliv, där individen återkommande behöverfylla på, reflektera över och därigenom få stöd att implementera ny kunskap. Det ärav stor vikt att akademin tar till sig och möjliggör för människor mitt i livet att ta del av och reflektera över ny kunskap och de möjligheter som den ger. Inte minst ärdetta viktigt inom teknikintensiva yrkesroller där påverkan från disruptiv teknisk utvecklingen är påtaglig. Med utgångspunkt i vårt arbete under 15 år riktar vi oss med denna artikel till kollegor inom det livslånga lärandet och presenterar upplägg och genomförande av onlinekurser där studenterna är mitt i yrkeslivet.

The realisation of a successful product requires collaboration between developers andproducers, taking account of stakeholder value, reinforcing the contribution of industry tosociety and enhancing the wellbeing of workers while respecting planetary boundaries.Founded in 2006, the Swedish Production Academy (SPA) aims to drive and developproduction research and education and to increase cooperation within the production area.SPA initiated and hosts the conference Swedish Production Symposium. This specialissue is based on invited papers from the 10th Swedish Production Symposium(SPS2022), held in Skövde, Sweden, from 26–29 April 2022. The overall theme forSPS2022 was ‘Industry 5.0 transformation – towards a sustainable, human-centric, andresilient production’.As stated by the European Commission the vision of Industry 5.0 recognises societalgoals. It goes beyond a techno-economic vision, industrial value chains and growthaiming for the industry to become a resilient provider of prosperity, respecting ourplanets boundaries, and placing the industrial worker, her well-being, at the centre of theproduction process.In this special issue, we set out to explore the transition to a resilient, sustainable andhuman centric industry. The first paper explores the need for a joint strategical vision thatinclude technology (selection, development, and implementation), organisation(structure, agility, management, stakeholder collaborations, work environment) andpeople (skills and competences, participation, innovation and creative collaborativeculture, and change readiness), to achieve a resilient and sustainable production systemeffectively and efficiently. The second paper discusses how reconfigurable manufacturingsystems can enable sustainable manufacturing and circularity, achieving highresponsiveness and cost efficiency. The third paper, a synthesis of universal workplacedesign in assembly, explores how human assembly workplaces can be designed in abetter way in regard to inclusion of diverse worker populations. The fourth paperdiscusses different meanings of digital transformation in manufacturing industry fromboth a theoretical and industrial perspective. The fifth paper explores challenges to designa product service system at an SME as an approach to support transition to Industry 5.0.The concluding paper in this special issue discusses a knowledge extraction platform forreproducible decision support based on data from multi-objective experiments.The organiser of SPS2022 has found these six outstanding papers to perfectly alignwith the theme ‘Industry 5.0 transformation’ and express their gratitude to theEditor-in-Chief of IJMR for accepting them for publication in this special issue.

More and more applications of Augmented Reality (AR) in manufacturing industries are introduced every day and while recent research has shown that one of the more popular applications, high volume assembly instructions, might not offer the best setting for this technology, many other applications exist that do. For assembly, remote guidance or training, rare assemblies, low takt time and high mix production, do still show promise. This article introduces the role of the Augmented Welder, a role utilizing AR technology for the programming of a welding robot. An operator support system in the form of a custom application programmed in Unity and visualized with a pair of Hololens2, connected to an ABB robot through RobotStudio. The robot is equipped with a welding gun dummy. The operator can, through the Hololens2, set safety boundaries, introduce work pieces, place targets in a 3D space, simulate the robot path, send the program to the robot, and activate the physical robot, among other things. We performed a modified pluralistic walkthrough to evaluate the operator support system both with respect to our application but also to search valuable insight to the general use of AR in the use of such applications. Results showed that while the subjects were generally positive towards the support system, several issues were identified and raised by various degrees of severity. The primary issues arose around the navigation and interaction with 2D menus and 3D objects in a 3D Mixed Reality (MR) space. The absence of physics confused the subjects as they could not interact with the virtual objects as they would have with physical objects. The lack of physics simply meant that they didn't act the same. Furthermore the interaction with 2D menus in a 3D space was both reported and observed as being very difficult as the 2D representations probably led to problems with depth perception. The general results of the debriefing indicated that using AR for robot programming was challenging although some of this can be attributed to the fact that this was the participants first use of such a system. The users indicated that the menus were appropriate and that the interaction was intuitive while the navigation within the system was not experienced as natural which confirms the above-mentioned issues with menus disappearing from the line of sight and feedback around generated target points being absent.