Development of a Rapid Assessment Method of the Potentiality to Transform Manufacturing Workstations into an Assistive Collaborative System

Work-related musculoskeletal disorders, and the aging of the workforce are two of the major issues that the industry is facing nowadays. A possible solution to reverse this situation could be the implementation of an assistive flexible solution such as collaborative robots (cobots). Although, most of the implementation of these technologies in the industry is not taking advantage of the main strengths of cobots, such as their flexibility. This work aims at developing a methodology to evaluate the potentiality for the implementation of an assistive collaborative system in existing workstations. The selection of parameters for this methodology is presented, as well as an example of its application on a furniture assembly workstation. The method considers the following criteria: physical ergonomics, cognitive ergonomics, health and safety, product and process quality, collaboration, economics, and technical requirements. The results show the relevance of the developed assessment method, namely, its success in pointing out the main critical issues of the existing workstation. Further work will include the validation of the methodology throughout a focus group and the development of a digital tool to ease its application.