Design and Evaluation of Multi-level Height Adjusting Trolley

Abstract

Ergonomics & worker safety are often overlooked when product quality & quantity are considered asprimacy in the industries. The paper ambitions to propose a design of a trolley used in the industries during the manufacturing process, the trolley have a multi-modification facility, to enhancethe quality & quantity of the manufactured goods& also to keep the workforce safe &healthy. In big business different operations were considered &posture analysis was conducted for two different work stations employing the similar material handling equipment. The ergonomic assessment score for legs, neck & trunk became 8. That score is awarning for greatthreat of Work Related Musculoskeletal Disorders (WMSDs) in the operators. The operators had to use such posture because of the practice of ordinary trolleys for all work stations. The workplace were under observation on platforms of varying heights depending on which device was used for their operations. To maintain the features of the finished product from a single operation, the product needs to be finely placed in the trolley that needs to be carried forward to the next workflow. The design mainly aims to achieve three goals, the safety of the operator is first by providing better position, second is to keep and carry the products without having to affect quality & be able to adjust the dimensions to suit different workflows. The design has two different variables, first is the rugged adjustment that can be made with variable heights for workstations on different platforms & the second is a platform loaded with self-adjusting fountain that pushing down the datum plane according to the heaviness of the outputs applied to it. The new proposal was grounded on increasing the ergonomic assessment score of about 3 by employing human manikin with anthropometric measurements for 50th percentile.