Five case studies on production line design were described to study the effect of an early design support tool. Based on these case studies, the simple, interactive, real-time, medium-fidelity, mixed-reality methodology was not only found to be a good early design stage evaluative tool for ergonomics and workflow, but a teaching tool as well. Despite some drawbacks, such as limited accuracy, mixed-reality simulation appears to be a good compromise between cost and fidelity, especially for small to mediumsized manufacturing enterprises, and gives important information on the layout focused on high efficiency and healthy postures. C 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
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