A maintenance time prediction method considering ergonomics through virtual reality simulation.

Area of Science:

• Industrial Engineering
• Human Factors Engineering
• Manufacturing Systems

Background:

• Accurate maintenance time prediction is crucial for effective maintainability design.
• Traditional methods often overlook the distinct nature of line production versus maintenance actions.
• Ergonomics factors significantly influence the time required for maintenance tasks.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a novel corrective MOD (Methods-Time Measurement) method for predicting maintenance time.
• To integrate critical ergonomics factors into maintenance time estimation.
• To enhance the accuracy of maintainability prediction during the early design stages.

Main Methods:

• Development of a corrective MOD method incorporating ergonomics factors.
• Utilization of DELMIA analysis tools to determine influence coefficients of various factors.
• Calculation of corrective MOD time for individual maintenance therbligs.

Main Results:

• The study successfully applied the corrective MOD method to a virtual prototype of an APU motor starter.
• Influence coefficients of key ergonomics factors were quantified using DELMIA.
• The proposed method yielded accurate maintenance time predictions compared to actual measurements.

Conclusions:

• The corrective MOD method provides a more effective and accurate approach to predicting maintenance time.
• Integrating ergonomics factors significantly improves the precision of maintainability predictions.
• The method is valuable for designers in the early stages of maintainability design.