The paper aims to investigate the reasons why Augmented Reality (AR) has not fully broken the industrial market yet, or found a wider application in industries. The main research question the paper tries to answer is: what are the factors (and to what extent) that are limiting AR? Firstly, a reflection on the state of art of AR applications in industries is proposed, to discover the sectors more commonly chosen for deploying the technology so far. Later, based on a survey conducted after that, three AR applications have been tested on manufacturing, automotive, and railway sectors, and the paper pinpoints key aspects that are conditioning its embedding in the daily working life. In order to compare whether the perception of employees from railway, automotive, and manufacturing sectors differs significantly, a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) has been used. Later, suggestions are formulated in order to improve these aspects in the industry world. Finally, the paper indicates the main conclusions, highlighting possible future researches to start.
12 October 2013 in International Journal of System Assurance Engineering and Management
Applying lockouts during maintenance is intended to avoid accidental energy release, whereas tagging them out keeps employees aware of what is going on with the machine. In spite of regulations, serious accidents continue to occur due to lapses during lockout and tagout (LOTO) applications. Few studies have examined LOTO effectiveness from a user perspective. This article studies LOTO processes at a manufacturing organization from a situation awareness (SA) perspective. Technicians and machine operators were interviewed, a focus group discussion was conducted, and operators were observed. Qualitative content analysis revealed perceptual, comprehension and projection challenges associated with different phases of LOTO applications. The findings can help lockout/tagout device manufacturers and organizations that apply LOTO to achieve maximum protection.
16 April 2014 in International Journal of System Assurance Engineering and Management
The big hospitals’ electricity supply system’s reliability is discussed in this article through Petri nets and Fuzzy Inference System (FIS). To simulate and analyse an electric power system, the FIS Mamdani in MATLAB is implemented. The advantage of FIS is that it uses human experience to provide a faster solution than conventional techniques. The elements involved are the Main Electrical Power, the Generator sets, the Automatic Transfer Switches (ATS), and the Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS), which are analysed to characterize the system behaviour. To evaluate the system and identified the lower reliability modules being proposed, a new reliable design model through the Petri Nets and Fuzzy Inference System approach. The resulting approach contributes to increasing the reliability of complex electrical systems, aiming to reduce their faults and increase their availability.