Numii: A real-time and non-invasive monitoring tool for the prevention of work-related musculoskeletal disorders

Project Information

Numii

Grant agreement ID: 885615

DOI

10.3030/885615

Project closed

EC signature date 19 November 2019

Start date 1 December 2019

End date 31 March 2020

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Innovation In SMEs

Total cost

€ 71 429,00

EU contribution

€ 50 000,00

Coordinated by

A.I.O.
France

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Numii (Numii: A real-time and non-invasive monitoring tool for the prevention of work-related musculoskeletal disorders)

Reporting period: 2019-12-01 to 2020-03-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Roughly three out of every five workers in the EU-28 report a musculoskeletal disorder. MSDs denotes health problems of the locomotor system and are induced or aggravated by working conditions. To prevent MSD, ergonomists and risk technicians gather information to develop occupational risk prevention plans but they have limited tools (mainly direct observation, questionnaires, etc. Our device, Numii, is designed to collect the movements of an operator in real time, and to evaluate his efforts while working. With Numii, industrial companies will be able to evaluate and improve their processes and assembly lines; making them more ergonomic and minimizing the incidence of MSD in their workforce. The objective of this action was to guarantee the feasibility of our system. We conclude we will need to optimize the system first, as well as running several pilots prior to full commercialization in Europe.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Our Feasibility Study has guaranteed the viability of the project. 1)In the technical plan, we set up the milestones for hardware and software improvements (i.e. to reduce the size of our device, increase the number of gestures that it can identify, refine the system to get more accurate results). We have also evaluated the production chain at an industrial level to define our industrialization plan. 2) We have evaluated the possibilities of Numii in the European market (France, Spain and UK) and identified the potential markets we will address with our commercialization plan, based on a cross-selling strategy. Moreover, 3) We have prepared a cost analysis to understand the financing needed for Numii’s upgrade, testing and industrialization; and a financial analysis in which we conclude that Numii generate €3.1M annual profit with a ROI of 1.39 in the fifth year. Finally, 4) our Freedom to Operate analysis shows that Numii is an original creation and freely exploitable.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Our goal is to provide a 100% non-invasive device to evaluate ergonomics for the automotive and aerospace industries. Numii collects accurate and real-time data without interfering in the worker's activity, to tackle the incidence of MSD in the workplace. .). The use of our system in the most labor-intensive assembly lines would contribute to alleviate the impact of MSD in our society, reducing associated costs: nowadays, around 40 million workers are affected by MSDs in Europe, leading to an associated cost of EUR 240 billion.

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