Question From IE-Human Factors Design Engineering Class

1) Design Problem (50 pts) You are designing a workspace for a highly skilled "job shop" worker who is employed company that builds various electrical equipment who receives a variety of work requests for building simple prototypes from the design and application engineers. There are 6 workers in the job shop. Aspects of the Job: Most of the jobs consist of constructing small ( 5 to 10kg ) to mid-size (10 to 30kg ) prototype brackets, assemblies, testing fixtures, and so on. Because a variety of tools are needed, the worker will need to get up from his workbench to access tools frequently. Workers frequently get up from their work stations to retrieve parts, use the large machine shop tools, and so on. A typical job shop worker usually has 5 to 6 jobs that he or she is processing at the same time. These jobs are usually kept nearby. Tools employed by the worker include both small hand tools (which each worker owns his or her own) located at the worker's work station, multiple parts bins containing screws, nuts and bolts and other assorted miscellaneous parts. There are also large machine shop tools that are shared amongst all the workers in the shop such as lathes, drill presses, milling machines, etc. The workers frequently must lift heavy trays and objects up to their work benches. Sometimes these lifts can be as much as 50kg. At most, a worker will lift objects like these 5 times an hour. All of the job shop workers are U.S. males and range in size from 40th to 90th percentile on all anthropometric dimensions. There have been a lot of complaints of lower back pain, upper shoulder pain and fatigue and pain in the back of the hands and wrists. A few of the workers have sought out medical attention for carpal tunnel syndrome and lower back pain. Design: Part A) List the critical design elements that must be taken into account. Reference where in the book and your course notes there is information that you can use to guide your design. The more specific you can be, the better. Discuss all elements of the job - the workstation, the movement and lifting, the layout, etc. The more you can think of to address, the better. Part B) You have been hired by the company to act as a consultant. Money is no object. Using the clues from the job aspect provided above, and your course notes and readings design a workstation for the workers. Also work through a basic workplace layout. Justify all of your answers by citing the material in the notes and text that you are using to guide your design. Simple sketches will work, however discuss your reasoning for your choices in essay format in addition to providing a sketch. Sketches by themselves are probably not sufficient, I would like to know your reasoning as well. Use as many pages as you need to complete your design. Many of the topics that we've covered in Chapters 10 and 11.. If you find you're only applying one concept, you're probably missing the point of this assignment. Of course, there is no single correct answer for this problem. However, some solutions are better than others and that will be reflected in your grade on this assignment. The more thoroughly you research your response, and if you can demonstrate that you can come up with a thoughtful and useful design, you will do well. Using Microsoft Word is acceptable for this assignment