Considering individual abilities and age-related changes in digital production planning—human-centered design of industrial work tasks with ema software

The demographic change and an increasing number of older and performance-restricted employees is a challenge for the industry. A prospective and corrective workplace design supports value-adding and ability-appropriate employment. In the early planning phase, digital human models can be used for ergonomic workplace design. Current digital human models and software systems usually do not have functions and methods for the digital design of workplaces for older and performance-restricted employees. A functional extension of digital human models can support the digital planning of ability-appropriate workplaces. This requires new functions in digital human models and new workflows for digital planning. Based on two industrial examples, the planning tool ema Work Designer is used to design the respective work processes according to age and ability. For this purpose, suitable age and ability-specific populations are defined using the human model configurator and used in the simulation. The application of ergonomic methods such as EAWS and job requirement profiles enable a detailed age- and ability-based workplace design. By means of a suitable redesign, the use of all populations, from small old women (F05-AK60-B05) to young large men (M95-AK20-B50), could be guaranteed in the industrial examples. In the sense of a prospective work design, ergonomic and productivity-related potentials could also be identified and optimized at an early stage without real prototypes or pilot structures. This results in significant cost and time savings. The 3D visualization also supports the communication and the acceptance of the planned measures.