Automakers bridge gap between engineering, assembly to enhance ergonomics

Allison Stephens, an ergonomics engineer at Ford's campus in Dearborn, Mich., monitors her colleague Glenn Harrington, fitted with motion-capture receptors, as he reproduces the movements required to install a center console in a Fusion midsize sedan. FORD / WIECK NOT BLADE PHOTO Enlarge

A device known as the Happy Seat, on a moveable robot arm, enables employees of Chrusler's Belvidere, Ill., assembly plant to see where they are attaching air bags inside vehicles. NOT BLADE PHOTO Enlarge

Quality inspector Rhonda Modrzynski prepares a transmission case for assembly at GM's Toledo Powertrain, where improvements in ergonomics have decreased injuries and further increased efficiency at a factory consistently honored for its productivity. THE BLADE/ANDY MORRISON Enlarge | Photo Reprints

DEARBORN, Mich. - The relationship between engineers who design products and workers who put them together has always been uneasy, if not downright tense.

Like a marriage with feuding partners, that tension often carried consequences: spotty product quality, lowered morale, and costly workplace injuries.

Now long-term efforts at Ford Motor Co., General Motors Co., and Chrysler Group LLC have made ergonomic engineers a type of "marriage counselor" who settle disputes between designers and assembly-line workers. Experts say the results are showing up both in the factory and on the showroom floor.

In its benchmark annual initial quality study released this summer, J.D. Power and Associates found that, for the first time in the study's 24-year history, the three domestic automakers demonstrated higher initial quality than did their foreign competitors. The study measures customer issues per 100 vehicles within the first 90 days of ownership.

"Domestic automakers have made impressive strides in steadily improving vehicle quality, particularly since 2007," said David Sargent, vice president of global vehicle research at J.D. Power. "This year may mark a key turning point for U.S. brands as they continue to fight the battle against lingering negative perceptions of their quality."

David Cole, director of the Center for Automotive Research, in Ann Arbor, said years of improving ergonomics, using "virtual" manufacturing prior to a product's launch, and robust design principles have contributed to improved product quality.

"There's no one single factor here," Mr. Cole said. "Anything you can do to streamline and facilitate manufacturing is going to have a positive impact on quality. It's just a cascading set of things that happen when we get smart."

At Ford, the manufacturing ergonomic studies have been conducted by Jack and Jill - two virtual characters used to determine the movements that line workers will use to assemble vehicles ranging from the new Fiesta subcompact to the F-150 full-size pickup.

"We borrowed from the movie industry the technology of motion capture," Allison Stephens, an ergonomics engineer at Ford's campus in Dearborn, explained as her colleague Glenn Harrington strapped reflectors across most of his body.

The reflectors' positions are noted by a series of sensors in Ford's ergonomics studio, recording each motion as Mr. Harrington - wearing a special virtual reality helmet that allows him to interact inside a computer-generated world - goes through the movements of connecting an electrical harness on a virtual 2011 Ford Fiesta's engine compartment.

Computers instantaneously translate data into movements for virtual characters Jack or Jill to determine if workers will be able to reach the part they have to attach and whether they will have sufficient force available.

"There's nothing better than finding the failure early," Mr. Harrington said as he demonstrated how shifting the position of an electrical connector could save workers. “Nobody likes to find a failure, but let's face it: If you're going to find it, find it early, and find it internally and get it fixed before it ever goes to our customer who buys the vehicle.”

Ms. Stephens said that mistrust among product designers, manufacturing engineers, and assembly workers has a long and sordid history at every automaker.

“I think the distrust came because we all did a lot of ‘over the wall,'” she explained. Product designers “would design it, toss it over the wall, manufacturing would catch it, and we'd be like, ‘What are they thinking? How are we going to get this to fit together with this?' And then we would do the same thing to the assembly plant: throw it over the wall and you get what you get.”

All three domestic automakers are expanding their use of computer-generated manufacturing modeling through a collaborative effort involving the United States Council for Automotive Research and the University of Iowa's Virtual Soldier Research group and its virtual soldier, Santos, who has been turned into a virtual auto worker.

Using research originally developed for the armed forces, Santos allows ergonomics engineers to predict variables such as a worker's walking speed and direction while carrying various loads and then mathematically predicting postures. The added ergonomic information allows the automakers, for the first time, to accurately predict the risk attributed to excessive physical demands on operators.

As Chrysler moves further away from year's bankruptcy, the sea change in how its employees work is under the umbrella of what its Italian partner, Fiat SpA, calls “World Class Manufacturing.”

Launched in 2009 as workers returned from a months-long shutdown during the bankruptcy, the program “has become a major driver of cultural change at Chrysler,” said Scott Garberding, the automaker's senior vice president for manufacturing.

In a recent speech at an annual industry conference in Traverse City, Mich., Mr. Garberding laid out the many advantages that factors such as improved ergonomics and teamwork have brought to the automaker and its thousands of employees in Toledo-area auto plants.

“At our Toledo North Assembly Plant, a team took on the task of creating sparkless welding,” Mr. Garberding told the industry audience. “Sparks had been common during the process. For a long time, weld slag was accepted as normal, but it is a safety hazard, requires cleanup time, can cause equipment breakdowns, and affects quality.”

Mr. Garberding credited employees in the plant, which makes both the Jeep Liberty and Dodge Nitro sport utility vehicles, with systematically improving the welding process to the point that sparks were eliminated and the welds improved.

Herb Baker, a hourly employee and team leader in the plant that makes the Liberty and Nitro, said World Class Manufacturing “is making us more competitive. Everything in the plant is improving. The workplace is safer. Our quality is better. Morale is higher.”

Chrysler spokesman Jodi Tinson said that at the automaker's Toledo Machining plant in Perrysburg Township, workers have submitted more than 4,000 suggestions through July to improve the plant and its manufacturing processes.

At the assembly plant in Belvidere, Ill., employees suggested and helped create what they call a “happy chair” that positions workers so they can see where they are attaching side air bags, Ms. Tinson said.

“Chrysler's management recognizes that the company's success depends on tapping into the knowledge, creativity, and dedication of the people in our plants,” Mr. Garberding said.

General Motors has also applied ergonomic principles to the work-space design of its new $392 million assembly line at Toledo Powertrain on Alexis Road, where it builds front-wheel-drive, six-speed transmissions. In fact, the design is so different from what historically has been called an assembly line that the name probably doesn't fit anymore.

“It's a world of difference now,” said Ray Wood, a 25-year veteran of the plant and president of United Auto Workers Local 14. “We used to work harder, and not smarter.”

Employees at Toledo Powertrain use mechanical assisting devices to lift heavy parts from automated carts onto their individual workstations and to lift them off again as the parts make their way through the assembly process.

Work stations are well lighted and air conditioned. Parts trays are loaded onto slanted roller tables, using gravity to effortlessly deliver them. When an assembly is completed, it is loaded with others onto robotic carts that move them from station to station along magnetic strips on the floor.

Plant employees operate in small teams that rotate up to four times an hour through different jobs to curtail repetitive injuries and strains and make monotonous work more interesting and engaging.

Mr. Wood said the lift assists, work-station designs, and job rotations have cut down dramatically on workplace injuries and have improved overall quality and productivity. But old ways of doing things sometimes die hard.

“It was a culture change for us. So was trying to get past [the temptation of] forcing parts in,” the Local 14 president said. “But you take the brawn out of it and put brains into it, and you end up with a much better product in the end.”

Joe Farinella, the plant's human resources management director, said the adoption of ergonomic principles has had such a dramatic impact that “we don't even measure absenteeism anymore.” Workplace injuries are down dramatically and productivity is up, he said. That's no small feat for a plant that has been named the most productive transmission plant in North America in nine of the last 12 years.

Injury statistics across the automotive industry point to an effect of ergonomic advancements. A spokesman for the UAW's headquarters in Detroit said that injury rates dropped by 33 percent in the first five years after the first ergonomic programs were implemented domestically in 1997. The union estimates that an estimated 31,900 injuries and illnesses were prevented as a result of ergonomic advances just between 1997 and 2002.

“The team concept, if done right, works,” the union said in a written response. “Including workers in the decision-making process is an important component to productivity, quality, and health and safety. Allowing workers input into how work stations are designed, and how job rotations occur is essential. If done wrong, it is a disaster.”

Contact Larry P. Vellequette at:

lvellequette@theblade.com\

or 419-724-6091