Digital Human Modelling for Ergonomic analysis of refrigerated cabinets

This paper presents a roadmap to evaluate ergonomic factors of refrigerated display units integrating virtual human models with virtual prototyping techniques in order to optimize the product development process and analyse alternative configurations of the product. Three users’ categories (customers, operators and maintenance staff) with different roles, needs, and ways of interaction with the machinery have been considered. For each category, we defined a set of ergonomic simulation tasks using virtual manikins, procedures to be followed by the designer/ergonomics tester and results quantification. Ergonomic simulations have been carried out varying unit type, configuration, manikins’ size and packed food.