In Jan 2017 IMR engaged with a large Multinational to identify areas of ergonomic risk in their Inspection and repair work area. An extensive investigation involving documentation of processes and testing of various technologies was carried out. From this work, the project was defined and initiated.
A two-year partnership project between Irish Manufacturing Research Ltd. (IMR) and a multinational. has been completed; with IT Sligo as academic partner.
The project aimed to reduce the ergonomic risks in the Inspection and Repair area. Main deliverables included two new technology additions to the Inspection work station.
These technologies have been presented to the Irish site and disseminated globally.
The primary goal of the overall project is to reduce safety risk for inspection and repair operators when completing daily probe card maintenance tasks. An identifiable ergonomic risk was associated with the inspection process as a result of the duration, intensity and repetition of manual interactions and the posture associated with these tasks.
Daily and individual incident Safe working limits were set for the inspection and repair task based on type of repair being carried out.
After several months of discovery work, the problem statement was focused to three main deliverables:
Our company “has been engaged with Irish Manufacturing Research for the past number of years and partnered with us to identify areas of risk and deliver solutions. IMR has been an excellent research partner for us. An example involved improvements in the safety and wellbeing of our employees on very dexterous tasks within the operations. IMR applied Innovative and Design thinking along with the organisation, hardware and software skills to deliver an innovative viable solution which has been deployed in the organisation. This centre is an organisation, very different from other research centres and brings solutions from idea phase to prototype, advance prototype and eventually supporting us in developing and industrial deployable solution” (Client).
Robotics and Automation