of a web-based collaboration platform for manufacturing product and process design evaluation using virtual reality techniques. International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing, Taylor & Francis, 2006, 19 (08) This paper describes the development of a web-based platform for collaborative process and product design evaluation. The Distributed Collaborative Design Evaluation (DiCoDEv) platform provides real-time collaboration of multiple users at different sites on the same project. The innovation concept of this platform lies in the use of Virtual Reality (VR) technology for the development of the working display environment that provides also navigation, immersion and interaction capabilities for all collaborative users in real time.The scope of this work is to provide an efficient robust collaboration tool for the real time validation of a manufacturing product or process, from the early stages of the conceptual design until the latest stages of the production chain. In order to demonstrate the benefits of the virtual collaboration that DiCoDEv platform can provide for manufacturing, a pilot case with a virtual reality environment has been developed based on the requirements of a "real life" manufacturing company.
This paper investigates the use of Virtual Reality and Human Simulation technologies for the ergonomic evaluation of manual assembly tasks. Within this concept, a virtual environment has been developed for the realistic representation of assembly stations into which digital humans can be imported and used to evaluate assembly executions in terms of ergonomics aspects. The industrial need lies on the reduction of process time and on the ergonomic optimization of the assembly workstations. The use of this environment enables the identification of critical steps during an assembly execution, which provides stress to humans resulting in increased assembly times and over wearied operators. A real life assembly task of a commercial refrigerator has been simulated and presented in order to demonstrate environment capabilities.
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