Agent-Based Simulation Approach for Occupational Safety and Health Planning: A Case of Electroplating Facilities

The current and future occupational safety and health (OSH) regulations from various national and international regulations such as REACH ask for an increasing process transparency in the electroplating industry to monitor the OSH situation. Currently, the COVID-19-related situation of shopfloor workers also requires an increased transparency in contact tracking. Manufacturing system simulation is a promising approach in this context. To date, simulation models mainly focus on the process-specific technical, economic, or environmental aspects. Modelling the OSH of workers in plating industry is rarely the focus of these approaches. This paper shows an integrated simulation framework to model industrial automated electroplating lines and the interaction with involved shopfloor workers as part of a cyber-physical production system. Line-integrated pre- and post-treatment processes as cleaning and degreasing are considered as well as their effects on shopfloor workers. In a case study, different applications with regard to OSH are shown to demonstrate the applicability of the developed framework and the high adaptability to new challenges as social distancing during pandemics.