Placement of Controls in Construction Equipment Using Operators´Sitting Postures : Process and Recommendations

Abstract: An ergonomically designed work environment may decrease work related musculoskeletal disorders, lead to less sick leaves and increase production time for operators and companies all around the world. Volvo Construction Equipment wants to deepen the knowledge and investigate more carefully how operators are actually sitting whilst operating the machines, how this affects placement of controls and furthermore optimize controls placements accordingly. The purpose is to enhance their product development process by suggesting guidelines for control placement with improved ergonomics based on operators’ sitting postures. The goal is to deliver a process which identifies and transfers sitting postures to RAMSIS and uses them for control placement recommendations in the cab and operator environments. Delimitations concerns: physical ergonomics, 80% usability of the resulted process on the machine types, and the level of detail for controls and their placements. Research, analysis, interviews, test driving of machines, video recordings of operators and the ergonomic software RAMSIS has served as base for analysis. The analysis led to (i) the conclusion that sitting postures affect optimal ergonomic placement of controls, though not ISO-standards, (ii) the conclusion that RAMSIS heavy truck postures does not seem to correspond to Volvo CE’s operators’ sitting postures and (iii) and to an advanced engineering project process suitable for all machine types and applicable in the product development process. The result can also be used for other machines than construction equipment. The resulted process consists of three independent sub-processes with step by step explanations and recommendations of; (i) what information that needs to be gathered, (ii) how to identify and transfer sitting postures into RAMSIS, (iii) how to use RAMSIS to create e design aid for recommended control placement. The thesis also contains additional enhancements to Volvo CE’s product development process with focus on ergonomics. A conclusion is that the use of motion capture could not be verified to work for Volvo Construction Equipment, though it was verified that if motion capture works, the process works. Another conclusion is that the suggested body landmarks not could be verified that they are all needed for this purpose except for those needed for control placement. Though they are based on previous sitting posture identification in vehicles and only those that also occur in RAMSIS are recommended, and therefore they can be used. This thesis also questions the most important parameters for interior vehicle design (hip- and eye locations) and suggests that shoulder locations are just as important. The thesis concluded five parameters for control categorization, and added seven categories in addition to those mentioned in the ISO-standards. Other contradictions and loopholes in the ISO-standards were identified, highlighted and discussed. Suggestions for improving the ergonomic analyses in RAMSIS can also be found in this report. More future research mentioned is more details on control placement as well as research regarding sitting postures are suggested. If the resulted process is delimited to concern upper body postures, other methods for posture identification may be used.