ERGONOMIC EVALUATION OF VIRTUAL ASSEMBLY TASKS Menelaos Pappas, Vassiliki Karabatsou, Dimitris Mavrikios, George Chryssolouris University of Patras, Greece pappas@lms.mech.upatras.gr, vasik@lms.mech.upatras.gr, mavrik@lms.mech.upatras.gr, xrisol@lms.mech.upatras.gr This paper investigates the use of Virtual Reality and Human Simulation technologies for the ergonomic evaluation of manual assembly tasks. Within this concept, a virtual environment has been developed for the realistic representation of assembly stations into which digital humans can be imported and used to evaluate assembly executions in terms of ergonomics aspects. The industrial need lies on the reduction of process time and on the ergonomic optimization of the assembly workstations. The use of this environment enables the identification of critical steps during an assembly execution, which provides stress to humans resulting in increased assembly times and over wearied operators. A real life assembly task of a commercial refrigerator has been simulated and presented in order to demonstrate environment capabilities. 1. INTRODUCTION In modern manufacturing industries, minimization of both product development cycle times and costs, are strategic objectives (Chryssolouris, 2005). In designing process workstations, such as assembly ones, several physical prototypes and ramp- ups need to be built for the verification of human related factors. In complex manual tasks, the human involvement is very critical as it influences the feasibility, the cycle time, the working comfort and the safety of an operation. In manufacturing, in assembly and in related work, where human operators are involved, the flexibility that a human brings with it provides difficulties in modelling their behavior. In this case, the interaction between humans and the products in all phases of the product life cycle, such as design, production, operation and maintenance, must be studied. The easiness of assembling a product has to be taken into account at the early stages of the design, where no physical models of the final product are available. Moreover, ergonomic problems demand empirical data on human capabilities and have to be examined at the early design stages (Chryssolouris et al., 2003; Chryssolouris et al., 2000). Virtual Reality (VR) and Human Simulation offer a new tool that needs to be properly exploited in order for the Design for Manufacturing /Maintenance