Job characteristics and occupational safety of manufacturing jobs at different levels of automation

Abstract

The impact of production automation is one of the main issues in occupational safety and health in industrialized countries. Although very little detailed information of safety is available about man-machine systems with different levels of automation. The aim of this study was to compare the content and characteristics, as well as occupational safety of jobs differing in the level of automation. Tasks done by CNC machine tools and manually were analyzed in two engineering machine shops. The tasks were examined by the AET job analysis method, and the SDQ safety analysis method. The study showed that the change from manually operated machines to CNC technology improved safety according to most of the safety factors. Safety devices became more crucial to the safety of CNC operator's work. The more advanced technology was linked with an increased frequency of contacts with other people. The incidents that occurred illustrated the problem that the operators were not able to predict the current state of the machine. The study stresses the importance of safety engineering knowledge while automated machines are designed.