The main objective of the project is to identify, study, and understand potential improvements of the Sealing Applicators production line of Ecco Finishing/Carlisle Fluid Technologies Company. The ergonomic cases in the plant, established as working postures, will be analysed using manual methods and virtual simulation tools. The analyses will be based on the measurements and depth of the data that is compiled during the visits to the plant. The software used to perform the ergonomic simulations, Siemens Jack 9.0, also has its limitations for each working posture of the production line, as some data for building the postures is missing due to limitations of the measurement taking process. The final result of the project is set of data that includes a solution implementation of the working postures analysed, also developed with simulations in Siemens Jack 9.0, of the production line, that could improve daily working life of the workers in the plant as well as management of the company. The project results reveal a need to add as well as alter elements of the workstation to make sure that the posture the user performs when working adheres to ergonomic principles.

Nolato Gota är ett företag som verkar inom plasttillverkningsindustrin, är baserade i Götene och har kunder såsom Volvo Cars, Scania lastvagnar och Husqvarna. Företaget har 93 maskinceller som kräver en manuell paketeringsprocess som utförs av operatörer, således överväger Nolato Gota att automatisera processen. Visionen är att lösa det manuella arbetet med hjälp av befintliga robotar. Syftet med examensarbetet är att göra en förstudie på en specifik maskincell för att se i vilken grad operatörernas arbete är kopplat till värdeadderande arbete, slöseri och standardiserat arbete samt hur det skulle påverkas av en automatisering.Genom att utföra tids-och frekvensstudier kunde operatörernas arbete analyseras och kartläggas, vilket gjorde att ett nuvarande tillstånd av den fysiska maskincellen kunde tolkas. En simulering skapades för att möjliggöra en enklare jämförelse mellan den fysiska maskincellen och hur det skulle blivit om Nolato Gota automatiserade maskincellen.I resultatet presenteras all datainsamling och visar hur operatörens arbetsmoment förhåller sig till slöseri, 5S, ergonomi och huruvida ett standardiserat arbetssätt fullföljs, vilket skapar det nuvarande tillståndet. Jämförelsen mellan simuleringen och det nuvarande tillståndet visar vad effekten av en automatisering blir. Resultatet av att automatisera pekar bland annat på att arbetskraften, slöseri och ledtiden skulle reduceras.Den presenterade simuleringen visar att det är möjligt för den befintliga roboten att utföra paketeringsprocessen inom det krävda tidsintervallet. Eftersom många av deras befintliga maskinceller har robotar och det manuella arbetet är snarlikt så möjliggör det goda förutsättningar till att automatisera. Nolato Gota skulle fördelaktigt främjas av att automatisera. / Nolato Gota is a company who acts in plastic manufacturing industry, is based in Götene and has customers such as Volvo Cars, Scania lastvagnar and Husqvarna. The company has 93 machine cells that require a manual packaging process performed by operators, which makes Nolato Gota consider an automated processes. The company’s vision is to solve the manual labor using existing robots. The purpose of the degree project is to do a pilot study on a specific machine cell to see the extent to which the operators' work is linked to value-adding work, waste and standardized work as well as how an automation would affect it.By conducting time and frequency studies, the labor of the operators could be analyzed and mapped, which was made in order to interpret the current state of the physical machine cell. A simulation was created to allow for a simpler comparison between the physical machine cell and how it would become if Nolato Gota automated it.The results present all data collections and show how the operators labor relate to waste, 5S, ergonomics and whether a standardized working method is carried out, which creates the current state. The comparison between the simulation and the current state shows what the efficiency of an automation will be. The result of automating indicates, among other things, that the workforce, waste and lead time would be reduced.The presented simulation shows that it is possible for the existing robot to perform the packaging process within the required time interval. Many of their existing machine cells have robots, and the manual labor is similar, which makes good conditions for automation. There would be a great advantage for Nolato Gota to automate.

Due to the globalization in society, modern habits are having a huge impact on the increment of possible issues that the digestive system may have. Sweden, like many other countries, is dealing with a large demand for endoscopies from people who require an exhaustive control of their issues or who want to prevent a possible intestinal problem. That is why the waiting time for the patients to have an endoscopy is usually too long.When talking about healthcare, it is important to have into account that the subject to process is people and not products. Testing different solutions in order to reduce the waiting list can be complicated because it is necessary to be careful with the process and be sure that what is done is going to work. Due to the difficulty and the risk of making changes while the system is working, the best solution is the use of Discrete Event Simulation (DES), as is it proved to be helpful in the healthcare ambit.One of the key tasks of this project was to analyze the flow of patients and workers in GHP Stockholm Gastro Center. That step provided enough information to have a global understanding of the system and the processes to develop a conceptual model to simulate. Once the translated model was verified and validated, the managers and employees perspectives and bottleneck analysis of the simulation model were taken into account for the elaboration of the different what-if scenarios. The resulting proposed scenarios were tested and a comparison among the results of the translated current state model and the results of the what-if scenarios was done. After that, the possible improvements that could be done in the system were discussed and reported at the end of this project.As a general conclusion, this project shows the potential of discrete event simulation as a tool to help the decision-makers to improve the system and reach their goals. Related to that, being capable of testing new scenarios without disturbing the current behaviour of the system is safer for the clients and also saves resources, time and costs. The conclusions after testing the different what-if scenarios were that the management of the cancellations, the addition of the number of available instruments and to limit as minimum the steps of the procedures that increment the occupation time of the room are a good way to achieve the clinic aim of reducing the waiting time for the patients to have an appointment if implemented together. Nevertheless, the addition of an operational room to process the patients with the largest waiting time is the easier way to improve the system and accomplish the goal.

Simulation is becoming more important nowadays, where there is a need for developing or improving projects more efficiently without taking any economic risk. Jernbro Industrial Services AB in Skövde is specialized in Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) production, and so far, they have been calculating the optimal number of AGVs of a system by using Excel. However, they want to go a step further and include simulation in their projects to obtain this data more accurately and efficiently and update their working procedures. In this thesis, former articles and researches have been studied to acquire knowledge in previous works related to the calculation of the optimal number of AGVs. A market survey has been conducted to find the best software simulation tool in the market for AGVs, by analysing the main features of each software. Although many software satisfies the requirements, FlexSim is the tool that has been chosen, as it provides good results in a user-friendly way. Therefore, in order to validate whether simulation provides accurate and interesting data for the company, an already existing model has been simulated to compare the new results with the former ones calculated with Excel. After discussing the results and the issues that have been confronted during the project, it has been found that the optimal number of AGVs in the system is 3 but, in view of security and the unpredictable behaviour of AGVs systems, 4 is the number considered as the best solution for the model. Moreover, all the benefits of simulation are presented as a solution for future projects the company develops.

No description available.

The industry is nowadays going through a transformation in networking technologies which leads to what it is called Industry 4.0. This stage of the industry is arriving from the hand of the internet of things. Having connected all the elements within a factory allows to control and keep track of them telematically. Virtual commissioning is in charge of designing, testing and debugging the system before it is even built. This project tries to approach virtual reality to virtual commissioning and create the virtual model of a human in these simulated environments. Technology allows introducing human interaction for many purposes such as operator training. To do this project properly a methodology will be followed for the design and creation. Once the background, frame of reference and literature review are established, the development can start. The development of the project has taken place alongside Simumatik Open Emulation Platform, consisting of creating the body of a person, as simple as possible, following ergonomics, into this platform for commissioning purposes. The model will be able to interact with the virtual environment like robots, boxes, and sensors. To sum up, the complexity of the model will be limited to the inputs coming from the head and the hands. There exist infinite solutions for which position should be the rest of the body, therefore, this project aims to fix some variables to find valid solutions. Finally, the project achieved building a digital human model in which the main goal was building the arms that are estimated. The model is capable of interact with Simumatik´s environment that has been created specifically to show the functionalities of this project, being detected for sensors and robots of the system.

Nowadays, virtual commissioning has become an incredibly useful technology which has raised its importance hugely in the latest years. Creating virtual automated systems, as similar to reality as possible, to test their behaviour has become into a great tool for avoiding waste of time and cost in the real commissioning stage of any manufacturing system. Currently, lots of virtual automated systems are controlled by different vision tools, however, these tools are not integrated in most of emulation platforms, so it precludes testing the performance of numerous virtual systems. This thesis intends to give a solution to this limitation that nowadays exists for virtual commissioning. The main goal is the creation of a synthetic camera that allows to obtain different types of images inside any virtual automated system in the same way it would have been obtained in a real system. Subsequently, a virtual demonstrator of a robotic cell controlled by computer vision is developed to show the immense opportunities that synthetic camera can open for testing vision systems.

Denna studie är en kvalitativ fallstudie utförd på Kinnegrip i Lidköping inom huvudämnet automatisering. Studien är en förstudie till automatisering utförd med hjälp av litteraturgranskning, intervjuer och observationer. Syftet var att svara på vilken typ av automatiseringslösning som skulle lämpa sig för Kinnegrips produkt K20-stål och vilka åtgärder som krävdes för att lösningen skulle vara möjlig. Denna studie går även igenom vilka typer av slöseri som Kinnegrip behöver reducera för att en automatiseringslösning skall vara effektiv. Resultatet av slöserianalysen leder fram till att Kinnegrip behöver förbättra befintliga processer i pressområdet, innan automatisering av K20-stål genomförs, för att undvika processtörningar. Denna studie använder en fördefinierad arbetsmetodik som är skräddarsydd för fallet som studeras. Studien resulterade i två lösningsförslag. Det ena förslaget innefattar linjära robotar och det andra förslaget utnyttjar en mobil robotlösning. Slutsatsen presenterar rekommendationer av åtgärder som Kinnegrip behöver göra innan automatiseringen utförs. / This study is a qualitative case study carried out at Kinnegrip in Lidköping within the automation field. This study is a pilot study for automation carried out with the help of a literature review, interviews and observations. The purpose was to answer what kind of automation solution would be suitable for Kinnegrip's product K20 steel and what measures were required to make the solution possible. The study also examines the waste that Kinnegrip needs to reduce in order for an automation solution to be effective. The result of the waste analysis indicates that Kinnegrip needs to improve existing processes in the press area, before automation of K20 steel is implemented, to avoid process disruptions. This study uses a predefined working methodology that is tailor-made for the case being studied. The study resulted in two solutions. One proposal includes linear robots and the other proposal utilizes a mobile robot solution. The conclusion presents recommendations of actions that Kinnegrip needs to do before automation is performed.

Through this report, the re-design process of a self-balancing robot is described. Different factors affecting the performance of the self-balancing task such as weight and mass centre location are analysed to follow with the design of a new prototype based on lightness and decoupling of components concepts. Furthermore, different control algorithms (PID, LQR and PID + P) are analysed, simulated, and compared between them to recognize the most optimal control system. This theoretical analysis is used as a guideline for the implementation of the control system in the prototype. The instability of an inverted pendulum system is a big issue in terms of controllability. So, simulations are carried out approaching to a more realistic scenario with the development of a non-linear dynamic model of the system via Simulink. Following the path for a more realistic simulation of the control system, controller’s performance is analysed and problems regarding execution time and time variability are identified. Moreover, the lack of information according the use of Raspberry Pi with MATLAB for the control of a self-balancing robot has motivated the definition of a strategy for enabling code programming through MATLAB and consequent code execution in Raspberry Pi microcontroller, clarifying the challenges that this environment drags with and giving solutions to this problem. Finally, with the idea this work could be used as a start-point for future works and use in educational area, conclusions are defined and explained, and future tasks are suggested to enhance the knowledge on this matter.

The purpose of this study has been to describe the current work situation for BA-operatives (firefighters) within Swedish rescue services, to examine the causes for occupational injuries and near accidents among BA-operatives and also examine in which type of environments occupational injuries and near accidents have occurred. All occupational injuries and near accidents that was reported to the Swedish Work Environment Authority during 1st January 2002- to 17th July 2014 have been analyzed. The analysis showed that a significant larger amount of injuries and near accidents occurred during nighttime BA-operations than during daytime operations. The analysis also showed that there are a significant higher number of occupational injuries during BA-operations among retained firefighters than among whole-time firefighters. Most occupational injuries during the investigated time period have occurred in detached houses. The analysis have shown that the reason for this, in most cases, is that the officer in charge has made errors when assessing the risks before the BA-operation was carried out or has failed to communicate his decisions with the other firefighters. Most of the near accidents during the time period have occurred in underground car parks and case studies have shown that it’s difficult for BA-operatives to locate and fight fires in this kind of buildings. The case studies also showed that local rescue services often have failed to prepare the firefighters for BA-operations in large buildings and also that many of the  local standard operation procedures are inadequate with respect to replacement of BA-operatives. (Swedish)