Health, Safety, and Quality in a Digital Plattform for Manufacturing Staff

Purpose and goal

The purpose is to make it easier for companies to achieve better work environment, health, safety and production. The purpose also include to enable wider participation in the improvement work, further developed competence, and improved sustainability. The project goal is to develop a modularized digital platform to support the personnel in the manufacturing industry. For this, smart wearable technology is used where sensors are integrated into the work clothes, Bluetooth connected to a smartphone with apps to collect and analyze data and visualize the results.

Expected effects and result

It is already known that risk assessments based on technical measurements have higher validity than those based on observations. This system is expected to be used by work environment managers and occupational health care actors, but it will be designed so that e.g. production technicians and designers also can become users and thereby receive support in their work to design ergonomic products and workplaces. The project results are expected to lead to a better working environment, health and safety, but also production improvements.

Planned approach and implementation

The present version of technical the tool will be developed to include more body parts to cover more possible health risks. New functions using wearables include: wrist posture and angular velocity, vibrations from hand-held equipment (where the hand sensor is used for exposure time assessment), postures and movements of the neck. The functions of communicating risk observations, quality problems and ecological waste will be improved, providing opportunities to contribute with improvement suggestions. The priorities of the user companies will be the basis for the developments.