A PARTICLE SWARM ALGORITHM FOR MANUAL LIFTING TASKS DESIGN

In recent years although the Industry 4.0 concept, which has been used in almost all stages, is still on the agenda, many lifting operations are still carried out manually. In terms of occupational health and safety, many legal regulations and the standards brought by various institutes, especially suitable for manual transport work is an important problem. Generally related to the lifting work; weight, working environment, load related shape, ease of handling etc. while the information is known, where the load is to be moved, how often, how much height and distance to be taken into consideration, the best values in terms of workplace design are the parameters that should be found when the laws and regulations are taken into consideration. The aim of this study is to propose a workplace design that minimizes physical stress by considering the predefined conditions for the work to be done. Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm has been used to design safe working areas for jobs requiring load removal within the constraints of the work area. Test problems related to workplace design which minimizes manual load lifting index presented by NIOSH are solved and compared with current studies. The proposed algorithm offers better designs compared to existing methods in such problems