Evaluation of a low-cost ergonomically designed adjustable assembly workstation

Fully adjustable, ergonomically designed assembly workstations could be expensive for companies to adopt. Therefore, an alternative low-cost, ergonomically designed adjustable assembly workstation was designed, developed and evaluated in a manufacturing company. Experiments were conducted on the existing and on the low-cost, ergonomically designed assembly workstation using ten industrial assembly operators. Operator performance on the low-cost, ergonomically designed workstation was 27% higher compared to the existing non-ergonomically designed assembly workstation. The increased performance was due to flexibility and ergonomic design features incorporated in the workstation. The cost of the workstation was three times less compared to the cost of a fully adjustable, ergonomically designed assembly workstation (smart assembly workstation) designed earlier.