Enhancement of Hazards Identification and Control in Engineering Technology through Interdepartmental Collaboration Shoji Nakayama, Ph.D. and Ge Jin, D.Sc. Purdue University Calumet Hammond, Indiana Abstract Due to current economic circumstances, many people have been enrolling in universities to gain additional knowledge to expand their job opportunities. To maximize students success within engineering technology in the future, institutions are required to incorporate hands-on experience along with theoretical components. Hazards identification and control are integral part of mechanical and industrial engineering technology disciplines. To assist this effort, Purdue University Calumet (PUC) has initiated interdepartmental collaboration. Virtual Reality based exercises developed through this collaboration would enhance hazards identification and control in engineering technology education. Furthermore, this collaboration led to grant proposals for further curriculum improvement through sharing expertise with multiple disciplines. Introduction Most accidents are preventable, yet accidents are costing U.S. approximately $160 billion dollars annually. 1 As Roughton and Mercurio 2 indicated, the most effective way to control hazards is through engineering control or eliminating hazards by design. Therefore, future engineers and technologists must possess a good understanding of hazards identification and control into their knowledge. As PUC has a strong engineering technology program, it is important for their graduates to follow codes of ethics indicated by professional organizations. According to National Society of Professional Engineers code of ethics 3, Engineers shall recognize that the lives, safety, health and welfare of the general public are dependent upon engineering decisions. American Society of Civil Engineers 4 also emphasizes that Engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health and welfare of the public in the performance of their professional duties. Therefore, our graduates must have a good understanding of their role as a professional engineer to develop equipments and/or services that incorporate hazards elimination techniques. Hazards identification and control are integral part of mechanical and industrial engineering technology disciplines. To assist this effort, Purdue University Calumet (PUC) has initiated interdepartmental collaboration between the Department of Computer Information Technology and Graphics (CITG), the Department of Constriction Science and Organizational Leadership (CSOL), and the Department of Engineering Technology (ET). Virtual Reality (VR) based exercises developed through this collaboration would enhance hazards identification and control in engineering technology education. Furthermore, this collaboration led to grant proposals for further curriculum improvement through sharing expertise with multiple disciplines.
Historically, people in academic institutions recognize an importance of interdepartmental collaboration. The deans of the College of Liberal Arts and the College of Business at Auburn University recognize the importance of such collaboration. 6 As Moore and Wells 7 indicated, multiple benefits can be obtained for interdepartmental collaboration from faculty members, students, and program level. For faculty members, such alliances and collaborative relationships could lead to expansion and enhancement of each faculty, sharing of teaching techniques, information, and philosophies from three different disciplines. In addition, development of collaborative skills would contribute to the professional growth among those faculty members, and collaborative efforts introduce each involved faculty members with new research in the disciplines of members. For students and program, interdepartmental collaboration provides a realistic model for collaboration where each student can learn such collaborative skills and be able to apply once students obtain a job. Moreover, each student who has gone through such collaborative program will have wider perspective of issues related to their discipline. It provides students an example as to how the teamwork and ongoing communication skills are essential in industry. It is important for engineers and technology students to be introduced to safety and health topics for several reasons. First, it is part of their routine responsibility. Both National Society of Professional Engineers 3 and American Society of Civil Engineer 4 code of ethics contain some statement with regard to safety, health and welfare of the public, and therefore, it is professional duty of an engineer to make ethical decision. Second, by acquiring knowledge with regard to risk assessment allows students to become more marketable. Moreover, companies seeking engineering and technology graduates are willing to hire who understand risk assessment that includes hazard identification process. This has been stated several times during regular Lean and Safe Network gathering. Lean and Safe is a group compromise of engineers, safety professionals, and other professionals from various industries to discuss issues surrounding safety and learn manufacturing concept. During the discussions, professionals always bring up an issue of not being able to hire engineer and/or technology graduates who possess an understanding of the importance of safety during design process. Furthermore, professionals are concerning that academic institutions are not preparing graduates who comprehend the importance of safety and health topics when they graduate. Risk assessment will become critical for graduates to be successful in their future career. In addition, graduates who have adequate knowledge in risk assessment would become more marketable to those organizations. Not having adequate knowledge or skills sets negative effects on organizations, as they have to spend additional time and resources to retrain new employees or graduates to have an understanding of the importance of safety in their work. Rationale of Collaboration Hazard is a term refers to anything that has potential to cause harm. Hazard identification is a common first step in any risk assessment process. Before protecting workers and properties, one needs to identify hazard and be able to recognize its severity and probability before taking necessary actions. Without recognizing a hazard, it is almost impossible to protect both human and property. As Manuele 5 mentioned in his article, to become a sustainable nation, it is important to reduce the risk of occupational injury and illness and by emphasizing safety principles and concepts among graduates of business, architecture and engineering schools.
Therefore, it is crucial that engineers and technologists, and safety graduates who will be working in industry acknowledge the importance of identifying a hazard(s) at their workplace. One of the most effective means to control hazards is through engineering control or through elimination of hazards. 8 As Roughton and Mercurio 2 indicated, this control method focuses on the source of hazards while other controlling methods are typically focusing on employees. It would be best if there is no hazard present or has been engineered out during designing stage. Because then, there would be no necessity to think safety with regard to an equipment, process, etc. Graduates from engineering and technology disciplines will therefore, need to have an understanding of the importance of hazards elimination through design, specifically using risk assessment technique. Without having knowledge in hazard identification, no engineer and/or technology graduates will have sufficient knowledge to eliminate those hazards during their designing stage. This concept or integration of safety into engineering curricula has been one of the main discussion topics among Lean and Safety network which consists of more than 75 engineers and safety professionals from various industries, such as aviation, automotive, and equipment manufacturers. Therefore, it is important to include hazard identification in engineering, technology discipline. Based on input from professionals in industry, PUC has a duty to meet our customer s request to incorporate hazard identification skill set into engineering technology field. Fortunately, the School of Technology (SOT) at PUC offers various programs from engineering technology to Safety, Health and Environmental Management major. This creates an ideal situation where there is an ease to incorporate safety and engineering technology. As both disciplines recognize an importance of hazard identification, collaboration took place to share expertise among the School of Technology where each department could benefit. This is when our collaboration took place between Engineering Technology (ET) and Construction Science and Organizational Leadership (CSOL), where Environmental Health and Safety major falls under. Process taken to collaborate The School of Technology (SOT) at PUC has three departments: Computer Graphic and Information Technology (CITG), Construction Science and Organizational Leadership (CSOL), and Engineering Technology (ET). Each department contributed their strengths to make this project successful. Technical specialist in the SOT and visualization specialist from the University also helped to achieve this collaboration effort. Both CSOL and ET recognizes the importance of inclusion of hazard identification processes as a part of both curriculum. To accomplish this, it was determined that each department had to contribute their strengths to come up with a new method to improve curriculum with the School of Technology. First of all, CSOL has OLS-Safety, Health and Environmental Management major. This discipline discusses standards, regulations, and ideal process to create a hazard free work environment through the use of risk assessment. For this project, CSOL brought in their expertise with regard to occupational safety and health topics, specifically risk assessment process such as hazard identification.
ET contributed by sharing their students and their laboratory equipments to proceed with this project. In addition, participating in this process allow the students in ET program to acquire critical knowledge with regard to hazard identification. This will also help market ET graduates to their prospective employers. Although CITG doesn t have close relationship with the topic of safety, however, they play a huge role in executing this project. They brought in their expertise to developed VR examples/programs which is a heart of this project. Faculty member and graduate student collaborated with visualization specialist at the VR lab in the University. The following describes some of the steps taken to successfully collaborate. Initiative After having a discussion as to how we could improve our curriculum, the importance of risk assessment was discussed. Moreover, the group discussed what we need to do to improve our curriculum, so that our students would be more marketable when competing for a job placement. Based on the information acquired from a professional network, such as Lean and Safe, and the strength of SOT, the group has decided to develop a series of exercises where student can learn risk assessment process within a hands-on environment. In order to do so, we need assistance, not only financially but also in technical aspects. Initially, CSOL planned to develop physical laboratory to develop a better learning environment in the field of safety and health. However, due to limited resources and offering numerous courses via the Internet restricted our ability to develop and use such physical laboratory. To offer effective learning environment that accommodates or overcome previous mentioned issues, it was important to develop and provide means to provide better learning environment to our students. To do so, OLS safety major under the CSOL had to seek help internally to determine the possibilities of developing a lab that overcomes both issues. Collaboration Process Upon informing the administration about this initiative, it has been determined/arranged that three separate departments gather to brainstorm ideas. One representative from each department from ET, CSOL and CITG were selected for this collaboration. During the initial session, each faculty member shared his/her specialization that could contribute to the development of a laboratory that would benefit all departments. After the meeting, an idea of converting physical laboratory exercises into virtual platform was derived. Upon discussion, faculty members from various program/departments brought in the strength in which we could contribute to make this project happen. Since other programs beside OLS also offer online classes, they also needed a laboratory which enhances their curriculum. Furthermore, the group has decided to develop an environment where various safety training scenarios can be reviewed without changing locations. The group then decided to discuss further, solidify this process, and execute the project. To proceed with this collaboration effort, faculty members from each department met once a week at the set time and date. This way we could keep moving with this process.
Project Identification The next process was to identify safety topics that each program could use. To allow students from both OLS and ET program to gain necessary knowledge from the proposed VR exercises, the following were considered. As ET seniors have to take senior project course, the topic must be relevant to their disciplines. Furthermore, safety component is one of the grading criteria of the senior project. Therefore, the group has to come up with a topic that can be applied or benefit various disciplines. Student in graphics and information technology majors will gain real-world project development skills and experience by developing virtual reality safety exercises and problem identification and solving skills. OLS and ET student will be able to exercise how to identify hazards and be able to implement correct or most feasible control measures as if they are on a facility. Topics were chosen based on Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) top 10 most cited standards and regulations. These are the standards and regulations in which many organizations may have problems controlling. Out of these ten violations, we selected top three OSHA violations that applicable to ET and CSOL, which are powered industrial trucks, machine guarding and lockout/tag out. Project Execution After determining aforementioned three safety topics to be converted to the virtual reality, the group was to execute project plan. First, faculty from safety major and a work-study student from ET identified specific equipment that can be converted into 3D model. Second, students from ET work together with faculty took multiple pictures of each equipment and/or process from several viewpoints for 3D modeling and texturing purposes. Third, pictures taken were converted into 3D AutoCAD model by ET students with the support of Computer Aided Design Coordinator from School of Technology. (See Figure 1) Forth, faculty members from CITG, ET and OLS discussed how to visualize 3D models in the VR safety laboratory exercises. Furthermore, hazards were indicated and proper corrective measures were transferred into the 3D VR models. This allows students utilizing this exercises can visually identify hazard and correct such hazard accordingly. Figure 1. Example of visual conversion of equipment
The focus of this project is to develop virtual reality safety laboratory exercises to enhance hands-on learning experience among technology students. To create virtual safety equipment/environment, photos were taken from top, bottom and side of an object, in this case a grinder. These photos were then used as reference images to accurately model the grinder in Autodesk Inventor. Figure 2 shows the grinder model imported to Autodesk 3D Max. Figure 2. 3D modeling of virtual safety equipment The 3D grinder model was unwrapped in UV texture coordinate to map the texture from photos. The UVW Unwrap in 3D Studio Max has been used to unwrap the polygons to match with the real photos. The 3D environment and the grinder model were imported into the Open Scene Graph (OSG) rendering engine. 3D objects in virtual environment are uniquely named so that the 3D Wand can interact with these virtual objects. The 3D Wand (ultrasonic tracking device) provides 6 degrees of freedom of position and orientation information. To allow the user freely interact with 3D objects in the virtual environment, the collision between the 3D Wand and the virtual 3D object needs to be detected and resolved. We applied hierarchical collision detection approach by combining bounding sphere and oriented bounding box (OBB). Collision detection with bounding sphere is the first step to check if the 3D Wand and virtual object are in the close range. If the bounding spheres are intersecting with each other, we would check the OBB of each sub-objects of the grinder model. The OBB is defined as 4 planes consist of the normal vector and a 3D point on the plane. We did not perform triangle-to-triangle collision detection for this project because the OBB based collision detection is sufficient for non-haptic VR applications.
An example of this process would be machine guarding topic, where students and faculty visited a local machine shop to observe equipment - a grinder/abrasive wheels. Students first took pictures of grinder, later focusing on those typical hazards with the equipment. This includes the distance between surface of wheel and the work-rests, the distance between surface of wheel and tongue guards, and the placement of eye shield. Students then break down the equipment into separate components that can be operated independently to show those hazards. This way, these components can visually illustrate the hazards and be virtually corrected in VR. Finally, these components have to be merged into VR to be visualized and interacted for safety laboratory exercises. The student virtually inspects the 3D grinder model to recognize the hazards of the grinder and interact within 3D virtual reality environment to correct hazard of the grinder. (See Figure 3) Figure 3. Virtual Inspection and hazard recognition in VR Collaboration Result From this collaborative effort, we were able to accomplish the following. First, each faculty member was able to learn and gain additional knowledge that have been outside of their field and be able to recognize how safety could affect other disciplines. Second, as a team, we were able to tackle the obstacle of acquiring external funding to assist developing a better learning environment. Third, as a team we were able to push our limit, motivate and innovate the team members, give us some fresh ideas from various viewpoints, and also encourage each member s progress. Conclusion Several benefits were acquired after this collaboration. First of all, CSOL was able to develop tool/exercises that will enhance the student learning in this discipline. Second, ET students will be able to gain essential knowledge that will be essential once graduate and work in the field. Engineering Technology students have gained knowledge in safety and hazard identification. CTIG students gained hands-on interactive VR programming techniques. Third, all involved departments were able to learn each other field of study in depth.
From this paper/presentation, attendees should be able to learn processes taken to improve engineering technology curriculum through interdepartmental collaboration. In addition, attendees will be able to understand how VR technology enhances hazards identification and control in Engineering Technology. Bibliography 1. Goetsch, D.L. (2008). Occupational Safety and Health. (6th Ed.). New Jersey, Pearson Prentice Hall. 2. Roughton, J.E. & Mercurio, J.J. (2002). Developing an Effective Safety Culture. Boston: Butterworth Heinemann. 3. NSPE National Society of Professional Engineers. (2010). Ethics. Retrieved June 16, 2010 from: http://www.nspe.org/ethics/index.html 4. ASCE American Society of Civil Engineer. (2010). Code of Ethics. Retrieve June 16, 2010 from: http://www.asce.org/content.aspx?id=7231 5. Manuele, F. (October, 2008). Prevention Through Design. Professional Safety. 29-40. 6. Roberts, D. & Santos, V. (2008). Collaboration between two academic units results trade mission to Latin America. Retrieved June 15, 2010 from: http://media.cla.auburn.edu/cla/trade_mission/index.cfm 7. Moore, S.B. & Wells, R.L. (March, 1999). Interdepartmental collaboration in teacher education. Intervention in School & Clinic. 34(4), 228-232. 8. Burgess, W.A. (1995). Recognition of Health Hazards in Industry. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Biography SHOJI NAKAYAMA, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Organizational Leadership and Supervision in the Department of Construction Science and Organizational Leadership at Purdue University Calumet. He teaches safety and health related courses, and has environmental, health and safety related experience in automotive, airline, regulatory agency, printing industries, and telecommunication. GE JIN, D. Sc. is currently an assistant professor in the department of computer information technology and graphics at the Purdue University Calumet. He was a postdoctoral research scientist at the George Washington University department of computer science, from 2007 to 2008. His research spans the fields of computer graphics, virtual reality, computer animation, medical visualization, and image guided surgery. He is a member of the ACM SIGGRAPH, MICCAI and SPIE.