Study of manufacturing system to flexibly suit aged workers' skill and health

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The purpose of the study is to establish a design methodology of the manufacturing system to flexibly suit aged workers' skill and health. First, their characteristics were surveyed, secondly, some experiments were carried out to establish the evaluation methods for the skill and health. The results are as follows :(1)As a result of an experiment in the material handling conducted for fifty five elderly male and female subjects including young people, the physical functions were declined due to aging, but the increase in the technical skill was seen at the middle age.(2)Human body dynamography to visualize the human body joint torque and a human interface to manipulate the computer manikin were developed for the individual evaluation of muscloskeletal load.(3)Vital reactions in blood pressure, EMG, and breath pattern were measured in typing operation and microscopic task. It was found that the physiological time series data trended to be stable along with learning.(4)Fatigue in work operations, physiological burden, and mental burden were chosen as the factors which hurted the health. As a result of some experiments in heavy work with hand and mental work, skin blood flow on the tip of thumb and blood pressure were found to change depending on the factors.(5)Skin blood flow was taken as an index of health, and an experiment was carried out to investigate the relationship between skin blood flow and work operation. As a result, it was found that expanding and constructing motion of elbow joint with angular acceleration raised skin blood flow efficiently.The results of the study give many hints to the concept for design methods of manufacturing system to flexibly suit aged workers' skill and health.