Patent ID: 7333869

Claim:
A computer-implemented ergonomic system embodied on a computer-readable medium for designing manufacturing workstations, comprising: a data store for storing ergonomic design rules which govern the design process as it pertains to human operators functioning in a manufacturing workstation; a data store for storing three-dimensional model data for a plurality of manufacturing workstation templates, where each manufacturing workstation template includes a link to the ergonomic design rules that pertains to specific manufacturing workstations; a data store for storing three-dimensional model data for a vehicle to be manufactured in one of the plurality of manufacturing workstations; a rendering module configured to receive input indicative of a particular manufacturing workstation selected by a system user and operable to display a three-dimentional module of the vehicle residing in the selected manufacturing workstation; and an interactive query tool in data communication with the rendering module and configured to present a subset of the ergonomic design rules to the system user in conjunction with the display of the three-dimensional model of the vehicle residing in the selected manufacturing workstation, where the subset of ergonomic design rules pertains to the particular manufacturing workstation.