A Study for Prevention of Musculoskeletal Disorders Using Digital Human Simulation in the Shipbuilding Industry

In this study digital human models of ship construction tasks using modeling & simulation were constructed and human models' activities through human activity analysis were evaluated. Human Factors experts analyzed the actual workers' tasks using the same technique used in human activity analysis at the same time. The main objective of this study is to check a possibility of applying digital human modeling technique to ship construction tasks that are mostly non-standardized(not uniformed) whereas most applications of digital human modeling technique have been applied to standardized tasks. We evaluated postures of both real workers and digital humans by RULA. It turned out that the final scores of RULA evaluation on real workers are the same as the RULA scores for digital humans. However, there were differences of RULA detail scores between real workers and digital humans in the several processes related with the wrist twist and deviations. Those differences are considered to be resulted from the error in the on-site measuring worker's body dimension which could be reduced by accurate tools to correct data for body dimension and digital real drawings for facilities. The results showed possibility of application of digital human modeling and ergonomic analysis on informal work operations as well as formal operations in the shipbuilding industry.