Today's challenge for workforce management lies in providing a healthy, safe and productive working culture where people are valued, empowered and respected. Workforce diversity is becoming an essential aspect of the global workforce, and ageing is the most prominent and significant factor in this regard. Diversity brings many opportunities and challenges, as workers with different backgrounds, cultures, working attitudes, behaviours and age work together, and in future, the key to organizational effectiveness and sustainability will heavily depend on developing and sustaining inclusive work environments where people with their differences can co-exist safely and productively. Manufacturing organizations expect the highest levels of productivity and quality, but unfortunately the manufacturing system design process does not take into account human variability issues caused by age, skill, experience, attitude towards work etc. This thesis focuses on proposing an inclusive design methodology to address the design needs of a broader range of the population. However, the promotion and implementation of an inclusive design method is challenging due to the lack of relevant data and lack of relevant tools and methods to help designers. This research aims to support the inclusive design process by providing relevant data and developing new design methodologies. The inclusive design methodology suggested in this thesis is a three step approach for achieving a safe and sustainable work environment for workers, with special concern for older workers. The methodology is based on the provision of relevant human capabilities data, the capture and analysis of difference in human behaviour and the use of this knowledge in a digital human modelling tool. The research is focused on manual assembly through a case study in the furniture manufacturing industry and joint mobility data from a wide-ranging population has been analysed and the task performing strategies and behaviours of workers with different levels of skills have been recorded and analysed. It has been shown that joint mobility significantly decreases with age and disability and that skilful workers are likely to adopt safer and more productive working strategies. A digital human modelling based inclusive design strategy was found to be useful in addressing the design needs of older workers performing manufacturing assembly activities. This strategy validates the concept of using human capabilities data for assessing the level of acceptability of any adopted strategy for older workers, and suggests that the strategies adopted by skilful workers are more likely to be equally acceptable for older and younger workers keeping in view differences in their joint mobility. The overall purpose of this thesis is to present a road map towards the promotion and implementation of the inclusive design method for addressing workforce challenges and in future the same strategies might be implemented within a variety of other industrial applications. The proposed three step inclusive design methodology and getting a reasonable understanding of human variability issues along with the use of human capabilities data (joint mobility in this case) in a human modelling system for design assessment at a pre-design stage can be considered as the major contributions of this research.

In 2018 IKEA Industry, the largest producer of wood-based furniture for IKEA customers presented their sustainability strategy for Financial Year 2025. In Health & Safety, they want to minimize ergonomic risks at their factories. To be able to understand what risks the factories contain, the first step is a common ergonomic risk assessment methodology. Because of a lack of knowledge in ergonomics at IKEA Industry, the responsibility was laid on this master thesis project. This project has with the help of interviews, surveys and observations found what needs the factories have in ergonomic risk assessment. A literature review also found things that the factories should have but haven´t asked for. Using benchmarking, several common methods used on the market has been summarized and analyzed by the requirements. Three methods, KIM, RAMP and HARM were chosen to be tested by the factories. In a user test, it was clear that KIM was easiest to use. HARM was eliminated because of the lack of evaluating lifting and pushing movements. To choose between KIM and RAMP they were evaluated in terms of the requirements. The results showed that KIM was the best method for IKEA Industry factories. At some places RAMP had good assessment methods. In order to not ignore these, they have been implemented into KIM to make it suit the factories even better. The result ended up in a document called Global standard of ergonomic risk assessment. The method is divided into three different methods depending on if you have lifting/ carrying work, pushing work or repetitive work. The results are then summarized in a chart that shows what needs to be investigated. This project has also with the help of the literature and the analysis of the factory, decided which roles that will participate in the assessment. The suggestions are manager, ergonomist and a production co-worker. With the help of this method, the factories will be able to understand what ergonomic risks they have. They will only need to evaluate the work tasks with the help of this method and will then be presented all high, medium or low ergonomic risks in the factories to minimize these before FY2025. / 2018 presenterade IKEA Industry, världens största möbeltillverkare, deras hållbarhetsstrategi inför finansiella året 2025. Inom Hälsa & säkerhet vill dem minska sina ergonomiska risker på fabrikerna. För att förstå vilka risker som finns har dem kommit fram till att skapa en bedömningsmetod som är gemensam bland fabrikerna. Då företaget har en brist i kunskap inom ergonomi har företaget valt att lägga över ansvaret på detta exjobb. Detta projekt har med hjälp av intervjuer, enkäter och observationer kommit fram till vad för behov fabrikerna har vad gäller ergonomisk riskbedömning. Med litteratur har även andra behov hittats som anses behövs men fabrikerna har inte insett behovet. För att hitta metoder har det genomförts en benchmarking där flera av de mest vanliga och erkända ergonomiska riskbedömningsmetoder har sammanfattats. Dessa metoder har sedan analyserats med hjälp av behoven och KIM, RAMP och HARM blev utvalda. Dessa har sedan testats av fabrikerna med hjälp av ett användartest. Resultatet visade på att KIM var enklast att användas. HARM valdes även bort på grund av dess brist i bedömning av lyft och drag. För att kunna välja vilken metod som passar IKEA Industry bäst bedömdes KIM och RAMP med avseende på de olika krav som sattes upp. Här visade det sig att KIM var den mest lämpade metoden för IKEA Industry. Då KIM ibland hade brister i bedömningen som RAMP var bättre på valdes det att lägga in vissa delar från RAMP för att komplettera KIM. Resultatet blev ett dokument vid namn ”Global standard inom ergonomisk riskbedömning”. Metoden är uppdelad i tre olika metoder beroende på om lyftarbete, drag/skjutande arbete eller repetitivt arbete skall bedömas. Resultaten är sedan sammanfattade i en tabell som visar vilka områden som behövs undersökas. Projektet har även med hjälp av teori och analys av fabrikerna kommit fram till vilka roller som skall deltaga i ett bedömningsarbete. Förslaget blev slutligen, ansvarig chef, ergonom och en produktionsarbetare. Med hjälp av denna metod skall fabrikerna kunna förstå vad för risker dem har i fabrikerna. Dem kommer endast behöva använda dokumentet, utvärdera och sedan få information om alla höga, medium och låga risker för att minimera dessa innan FY2025.

Workplace safety, particularly in manual handling tasks, is a critical concern that hasbeen increasingly addressed using advanced risk assessment tools. However, pre-senting the complex results of these assessments in an easily digestible format re-mains a challenge. This thesis focused on designing and developing a user-friendlyweb application to visualise risk assessment data effectively. Grounded in a robusttheoretical framework that combines user experience principles, and data visualisa-tion techniques. The study employed an iterative, user-centric design process to de-velop the web application. Multiple visualisation methods, such as pie charts for vis-ualising risk distribution, bar chart, and line chart for time-based analysis, were eval-uated for their effectiveness through usability testing. The application's primary con-tribution lies in its efficient data visualisation techniques, aimed at simplifying com-plex datasets into actionable insights. This work lays the groundwork enabling futuredevelopment by pinpointing areas for improvement like enhanced interactivity andaccessibility. / Belastningsergonomiska risker i arbetsmiljön, särskilt i uppgifter som involverarmanuell hantering, är en kritisk fråga som alltmer har adresserats med hjälp av avan-cerade riskhanteringsverktyg. Men att presentera de komplexa resultaten av dessabedömningar i ett lättillgängligt format kvarstår som en utmaning. Denna avhand-ling fokuserade på att designa och utveckla en användarvänlig webbapplikation föratt effektivt visualisera riskbedömningsdata. Studien bygger på en robust teoretiskram och kombinerar principer för användarupplevelse med datavisualiseringstekni-ker. Webbapplikationen har utvecklats med hjälp av en iterativ och användarcentre-rad designprocess. Flera visualiseringsmetoder, såsom cirkeldiagram för att visuali-sera riskfördelning, stapeldiagram och linjediagram för tidsbaserad analys, utvärde-rades för deras effektivitet genom användningstester och utvärderingsformulär. Ap-plikationens primära bidrag ligger i dess effektiva datavisualiseringstekniker, somsyftar till att förenkla komplex information till handlingsbara insikter. Detta arbetelägger grunden och möjliggör framtida utveckling genom att peka ut områden förförbättring, som förbättrad interaktivitet och tillgänglighet.