Lean Manufacturing (LM), Ergonomics and Human Factors (E&HF), and Human–Robot Collaboration (HRC) are vibrant topics for researchers and companies. Among other emergent technologies, collaborative robotics is an innovative solution to reduce ergonomic concerns and improve manufacturing productivity. However, there is a lack of studies providing empirical evidence about the implementation of these technologies, with little or no consideration for E&HF. This study analyzes an industrial implementation of a collaborative robotic workstation for assembly tasks performed by workers with musculoskeletal complaints through a synergistic integration of E&HF and LM principles. We assessed the workstation before and after the implementation of robotic technology and measured different key performance indicators (e.g., production rate) through a time study and direct observation. We considered 40 postures adopted during the assembly tasks and applied three assessment methods: Rapid Upper Limb Assessment, Revised Strain Index, and Key Indicator Method. Furthermore, we conducted a questionnaire to collect more indicators of workers’ wellbeing. This multi-method approach demonstrated that the hybrid workstation achieved: (i) a reduction of production times; (ii) an improvement of ergonomic conditions; and (iii) an enhancement of workers’ wellbeing. This ergonomic lean study based on human-centered principles proved to be a valid and efficient method to implement and assess collaborative workstations, foreseeing the continuous improvement of the involved processes.
Industry 4.0 has led to a widespread and impactful evolution of technology that is transforming industry and organizations in general. Collaborative robotics is considered one of the new features in this movement allowing humans and robots to work together in perfect collaboration. This paper presents the implementation of one collaborative robot in an assembly process and analyses its impact on performance and ergonomic work conditions. In terms of ergonomic conditions, the musculoskeletal risk was assessed, comparing both processes (without and with robotics support). The results demonstrated that collaborative robotics is a solution that allows improving the ergonomic work conditions throughout the assembly process.
In this paper, we describe the role of open-source tools to develop educational systems. In particular, we describe TRUNAJOD, an open-source library to extract readability indices from texts, and how it was used to develop a tool to analyze text complexity of school texts to ease the workload on teachers when selecting a text for a particular reading comprehension task. This educational tool helps the user to calibrate or select texts based on the target school level and desired complexity for the task, offering additionally important development possibilities for writing assessment.
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