How companies can comply with ergonomic norms and defend their profitability.

What is it about?

In the paper a design methodology for assembly lines is presented. The innovative aspect is that the methodoly takes into consideration, during the design phase, both the ergonomic risks evaluation, performed trough the OCRA method, and balancing/sequencing decisions related to mixed models assembly lines. The main finding is that, using the proposed methodology, the respect of the ergonomic legislation often do not imply a significant increment of total design costs.

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Why is it important?

The respect of ergonomic norms is often viewed by companies as an onerous obligation, being often associated to the increase of required manpower. The results presented in the paper should encourage companies to adopt design methodologies able at the same time to comply with ergonomic legislation and to defend their profitability.