30 years of ergonomics at 3M: a case study

The added value of the Ergonomics Program at 3M was found to be improved employee safety, compliance with regulations and reduction of work-related illness, increases in productivity, and quality and operating efficiency. This paper describes the thirty years of existence of this program. For the first twenty years, the program objectives were to: respond to requests for assistance related to work-related musculoskeletal disorder (WMSD) concerns, raise employee awareness of MSDs and ergonomics; educate engineers in ergonomics design; and develop ergonomics teams at manufacturing locations. Since the year 2000, 3M's Ergonomics Program has been in transition from a US-centric and corporate-based technical-expertled program to a global program applying participatory ergonomics strategies within a macroergonomics framework. During that transition, the existing program requirements were revised, new methods and program tools were created, and expectations for implementation at the manufacturing locations clarified. This paper focuses on the company's manufacturing ergonomics program activities during the past ten years and includes specifics of the program's objectives, risk assessment reduction process, and ergonomics technical expertise development. The main benefit achieved throughout the company is reducing employee injury while also increasing productivity and operating efficiency.     

EADS - Ergonomics Affinity Design System

The Ergonomics Affinity Design System (EADS) is a systematic problem-solving tool used to analyze and solve ergonomics issues. The basis of EADS is the identification and ranking of affinities or relationships that exist among the factors that influence job performance in the workplace. The five-step system can be applied to the workplace at varying levels of complexity based on need. It can be used at the design phase or in a redesign/modification application. Applicable for use in any work environment, the system can be an important part of the overall ergonomics process.     

Ergonomics and Kaizen as strategies for competitiveness: a theoretical and practical in an automotive industry

With increased international competitiveness in the automotive industry, came the concern of the companies save costs and lower production costs. For this purpose many ways are designed to reduce costs and waste of raw materials and reduce activities that do not aggregate value to manufacturing processes. In the early XVII appears the manufacturing system, which processes were hard with little concern for the health and safety of employees and conditions of the workplace. After the advent of the production system called lean manufacturing, a new paradigm in terms of production system capable of providing high levels of productivity and quality. It is based on waste elimination that occur during the production process. After began a new way of thinking, creating a culture of continuous improvement and lean process with no waste and reducing costs, without neglecting the welfare worker and improving the conditions of their work environment. This paper presents a reflection on the application of ergonomics in a lean production system of an automotive industry, using methodology based on the Kaizen (Continuous Improvement) to gain performance and improving the conditions of the workplace, also will be presented with positive and negative points in using this methodology in relation to ergonomics. The research will be conducted by collecting data 'in loco' and interviews with workers. Some studies show that in companies that are lean system and using the methodology of Kaizen, the results of product quality, levels of absenteeism and accidents are better than those obtained in companies that do not apply the same concept.     

A brief essay on ergonomics in graphic design

Through Brazilian publication revision on the relations amongst Ergonomics and Design, we observed the tendency towards an approach focusing on product design. However, it is our duty to question which would be the influences of ergonomics in the graphic design. As a methodology, we considered the identification that the practices derived from ergonomics as epistemic system found in the main bibliography related to graphic design.     

Applying research to practice: generalist and specialist (visual ergonomics) consultancy

Ergonomics is a holistic discipline encompassing a wide range of special interest groups. The role of an ergonomics consultant is to provide integrated solutions to improve comfort, safety and productivity. In Australia, there are two types of consultants--generalists and specialists. Both have training in ergonomics but specialist knowledge may be the result of previous education or work experience. This paper presents three projects illustrating generalist and specialist (visual ergonomics) consultancy: development of a vision screening protocol, solving visual discomfort in an office environment and solving postural discomfort in heavy industry. These case studies demonstrate how multiple ergonomics consultants may work together to solve ergonomics problems. It also describes some of the challenges for consultants, for those engaging their services and for the ergonomics profession, e.g. recognizing the boundaries of expertise, sharing information with business competitors, the costs-benefits of engaging multiple consultants and the risk of fragmentation of ergonomics knowledge and solutions. Since ergonomics problems are often multifaceted, ergonomics consultants should have a solid grounding in all domains of ergonomics, even if they ultimately only practice in one specialty or domain. This will benefit the profession and ensure that ergonomics remains a holistic discipline.     

From 'human being' to 'social subject': "unfreezing" ergonomics and the implications for understanding and intervening health-disease process

Ergonomics has been successful in increasing productivity and comfort in the work arena. It has also contributed to reducing occupational accidents. Despite this, ergonomics is frequently limited to understanding the health-disease process related to human-technology interactions, as this process is more complex than what can be understood from an ergonomic evaluation. Recognising this limit, this work ontologically and epistemologically contrasts the notions of 'human being' and 'social subject', and concludes that the study object of ergonomics, or human-technology interaction, greatly depends on social aspects that nowadays are not tackled explicitly: route (history), project, structure, agency, motivations and power. It also analyses how participatory ergonomics tacitly includes many of these aspects, including some implications that the change of notion, from 'human being' to 'social subject', brings to the understanding of the health-disease process and the reduction of associated risks during human activities.     

Social responsibility and work conditions: building a reference label, Démarche T®

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is now considered in large and global companies and the recent publication of the ISO 26000 standard clarifies the targets. Based on our consultancy's experience for fifteen years in ergonomics mainly in French small and medium enterprises, we developed a label to coax and value efforts of companies in dealing with health and safety at the work place as required by ISO 26000 paragraph 6.4. The formal approach of ISO describes what should be achieved but gives no cue on how actual conditions of work should be improved. The label, called Démarche T (ie Process W where W stands for work) aims the management of work conditions as a process, giving visibility and credit to companies for their continuous involvement in the matter. We describe the items and processes that are part of our assessment. We first conduct an ergonomic diagnosis including the analysis of records on health, physical and psychological well-being, observations at the workplace and interviews with the workers. This diagnosis is followed by recommendations. The fulfillment of these is assessed yearly. Items under assessment include: - ergonomics, health and safety in the companies statements and their impact in actual project management; - relations with workers through the committee for health and safety; - actual results on health, safety and work conditions. On a local level, we give the companies passing the label a competitive edge in recruiting better candidates motivated by good work conditions, and help them fulfill ISO 26000 requirements, an increasingly decisive advantage to benefit from public regional and European support. Our paper describes the diagnosis and follow-up process.     

Evidence-based ergonomics: a model and conceptual structure proposal

In Human Factors and Ergonomics Science (HFES), it is difficult to identify what is the best approach to tackle the workplace and systems design problems which needs to be solved, and it has been also advocated as transdisciplinary and multidisciplinary the issue of "How to solve the human factors and ergonomics problems that are identified?". The proposition on this study is to combine the theoretical approach for Sustainability Science, the Taxonomy of the Human Factors and Ergonomics (HFE) discipline and the framework for Evidence-Based Medicine in an attempt to be applied in Human Factors and Ergonomics. Applications of ontologies are known in the field of medical research and computer science. By scrutinizing the key requirements for the HFES structuring of knowledge, it was designed a reference model, First, it was identified the important requirements for HFES Concept structuring, as regarded by Meister. Second, it was developed an evidence-based ergonomics framework as a reference model composed of six levels based on these requirements. Third, it was devised a mapping tool using linguistic resources to translate human work, systems environment and the complexities inherent to their hierarchical relationships to support future development at Level 2 of the reference model and for meeting the two major challenges for HFES, namely, identifying what problems should be addressed in HFE as an Autonomous Science itself and proposing solutions by integrating concepts and methods applied in HFES for those problems.     

Performance indicators of work activity

The measurement of performance is a current topic in the management of people in companies, used as a parameter of effectiveness of processes and operations of production. The methods and models of the indicators of current use in the production have concentrated in the assessment of people's performance as determinative resource of the organizational success in the search for the competitiveness. Associated with the classic indicators of performance assessment of the production proceeding, other indicators are used in the assessment of risks and hazards, however with methods focused in the tasks, without connection with the real work activity. The present article explores literature on the models of performance measurement in use in companies and a field research to understand how companies interpret and use indicators that relate health and work, to direct future studies on the subject. Regarding the literature review, one can see that health indicators can be basically divided into two major groups: the legal and managerial indicators. When conducting case studies, it can be realized that companies do not have precisely the concept of health indicator, or were unable to define which of the indicators could be considered indicators of health, considering that absenteeism was the indicator mentioned by the four companies.     

A multi-ontology view of ergonomics: applying the Cynefin Framework to improve theory and practice

Ergonomics literature has often identified concerns about the difficulty of gaining support for ergonomics interventions. There appears to be a shift from the view that ergonomics issues can be made to be simple, towards a wider appreciation of the complexity of ergonomics problems in the real world. A framework from knowledge management--the Cynefin Framework--is recommended as providing a way of re-perceiving situations where ergonomics problems may be present or have already been identified. The framework uses multiple ontologies and indicates appropriate courses of investigation and action for each of four domains--the simple, the complex, the complicated and the chaotic. This paper presents evidence of the need for a multi-ontology approach and shows how the Cynefin Framework can be applied to ergonomics.     

New procedures of ergonomics design in a large oil company

This study presents the challenge involved in the negotiation and construction of a standard process in a major petroleum company that has the purpose of guiding the implementation of ergonomic studies in the development of projects, systemising the implementation of ergonomics design. The standard was created by a multi-disciplinary working group consisting of specialists in ergonomics, who work in a number of different areas of the company. The objective was to guide "how to" undertake ergonomics in all projects, taking into consideration the development of the ergonomic appraisals of work. It also established that all the process, in each project phase, should be accompanied by a specialist in ergonomics. This process as an innovation in the conception of projects in this company, signals a change of culture, and, for this reason requires broad dissemination throughout the several company leadership levels, and training of professionals in projects of ergonomics design. An implementation plan was also prepared and approved by the corporate governance, complementing the proposed challenge. In this way, this major oil company will implement new procedures of ergonomics design to promote health, safety, and wellbeing of the workforce, besides improving the performance and reliability of its systems and processes.     

Overview of ergonomics built environment

This article provides an overview of academic research in the scientific discipline of ergonomics in the context of the built environment, from data collected from journals, conferences and research groups whose focus is the theme of the Ergonomics of Built Environment. Starting from the context of the Ergonomics of Built Environment, it identifies the broadcast media who publish work in this area and its scientific production, seeking to recover from the first published papers to the production of the most recent scientific journals and conferences to be launched 2010. From this mapping, we identified the major outstanding and open issues in these studies, outlining the state of the art Ergonomics Built Environment, in order to inform those interested and intend to develop scientific research in this field.     

A literature review about usability evaluation methods for e-learning platforms

The usability analysis of information systems has been the target of several research studies over the past thirty years. These studies have highlighted a great diversity of points of view, including researchers from different scientific areas such as Ergonomics, Computer Science, Design and Education. Within the domain of information ergonomics, the study of tools and methods used for usability evaluation dedicated to E-learning presents evidence that there is a continuous and dynamic evolution of E-learning systems, in many different contexts -academics and corporative. These systems, also known as LMS (Learning Management Systems), can be classified according to their educational goals and their technological features. However, in these systems the usability issues are related with the relationship/interactions between user and system in the user's context. This review is a synthesis of research project about Information Ergonomics and embraces three dimensions, namely the methods, models and frameworks that have been applied to evaluate LMS. The study also includes the main usability criteria and heuristics used. The obtained results show a notorious change in the paradigms of usability, with which it will be possible to discuss about the studies carried out by different researchers that were focused on usability ergonomic principles aimed at E-learning.     

Early variability in the conceptualisation of "sustainable development and human factors"

The sub-discipline of "sustainable development and human factors" is relatively new, first being used in 2006 with a Technical Committee of the IEA being established only in 2009 and a similar special interest group on "green ergonomics" at the Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors being established in 2010. In general though, the definitions and practice of "sustainable development" is highly contentious and ambiguous across a range of disciplines. This paper examines the diversity of definitions and approaches to sustainable development and human factors in the early papers in this sub-discipline. An examination of 45 chapters and papers (from 2008 to 2011) reveals a surprising consistency in the definitions used for sustainable development but also a large proportion of the papers where no definitions are given at all. The majority of papers were, however, biased towards an economic capital and social capital emphasis, which is to be expected of work traditionally in the ergonomics paradigm. Further, most papers were theoretical in nature demonstrating a great opportunity for empirical work. The variability in definitions is discussed in relation to the future challenges facing the growth of this emergent sub-discipline and opportunities for further theoretical and empirical work.     

Ergonomics and sustainability in the design of everyday use products

The relationship between Ergonomics and Design is a key element in the sustainability project, as well as in many other areas of experimental design. In the Design for Sustainability field, Ergonomics is a strategic factor for design culture innovation, providing designers with the necessary knowledge and skills regarding human characteristics and capabilities, as well as user needs and desires during use and interaction with products in work activities and everyday life. Ergonomics is also a strategic innovative factor in design development and manufacturing processes. In fact, ergonomics provides a methodological approach in user-product interaction evaluation processes through the use of participatory design and survey methods, user trials, direct observation, savings and resource conservation, etc.On the other hand, design offers solutions able to interpret user needs and expectations, at the same time suggesting new behaviors and lifestyles.In Design for Sustainability, the ergonomic and user-centered approach contributes greatly to lifestyles and innovative use of products--making it possible to understand and interpret real people needs and expectations in their everyday actions and behavior.New consumption patterns, new awareness of lifestyles, energy source consumption, purchasing methods and consumption style etc. can be supported by design innovation, responding to expressed and unexpressed user needs. With this in mind, the ergonomic approach represents the starting point for design choices and at the same time, a tool for assessing their appropriateness and effectiveness.     

Performance-based management and quality of work: an empirical assessment

In France, in the private sector as in the public sector, performance-based management tends to become a norm. Performance-based management is supposed to improve service quality, productivity and efficiency, transparency of allotted means and achieved results, and to better focus the activity of employees and of the whole organization. This text reports a study conducted for the French Ministry of Budget by a team of researchers in ergonomics, sociology and management science, in order to assess the impact of performance-based management on employees, on teams and on work organization. About 100 interviews were conducted with employees of all categories and 6 working groups were set up in order to discuss and validate or amend our first analyses. Results concern several aspects: workload and work intensification, indicators and performance management and the transformation of jobs induced by performance management.     

The charge of ergonomics--a model according to the influence of ergonomic workplace design for economical and efficient indicators of the automotive industry

The importance of ergonomic workplace design has been rising incredibly. The knowledge of the interaction with a view to many indicators (e.g. operators' health, quality, productivity etc.) in the automotive assembly shop pushed into another thinking of ergonomics and an increasing awareness of economic possibilities relating to benefits and cost savings aligned with ergonomics. The paper discusses exemplary the various indicators and factors which could be influenced by ergonomic workplace design. These factors are linked each other and support the statement of ergonomic efficiency. Thus, the aim of this paper is to present a model which describes that investments in ergonomic work placement acts with preventive measurements, minimization of losses (refinishing operations, compensation money etc.) and extensive economies on the whole company.     

The importance of ergonomics in the design conceptual process: Daciano da Costa - a case study on practicing and teaching

This paper, which stems from a developing research project, aims to disseminate among the international scientific community the thought of Daciano da Costa (1930-2005) given the importance he conferred to Ergonomics, throughout his teaching career and his professional practice as a reference figure in the Design of the twentieth century in Portugal. We focus on the important role played by Ergonomics within the conceptual Design process, through the case study Daciano da Costa.What Daciano brought to the practice and teaching was a modernization of processes, a new perspective on the emerging themes of design, like ergonomics. Daciano believed that designing was providing a service. This task was understood as the building of a relationship with users. One of his distinguished features was the particular attention he paid to the unique aspects of the scale of proximity: the scale of the hand, of the immediate gesture, of the body. As a professor he insisted not so much on the end product, but rather on the recognition of the research process and how it was conducted. When designing, developing and supervising the exercises he set, ergonomic factors were one of his main concerns.     

Fundamentals of systems ergonomics

Ergonomics/human factors is, above anything else, a systems discipline applying a systems philosophy and systems approaches. Many things are labeled as "systems X" in today's world, and this paper specifies just what attributes and notions define ergonomics/human factors in systems terms. These are concern for context, acknowledgement of interactions and complexity, a holistic approach, recognition of emergence and embedding of the professional effort involved within organization systems. These five notions are illustrated with examples from a large body of work on rail human factors.     

Ergonomics analysis of the activity of boning shoulder in a pig slaughter-house in the city of Ipiranga-SC

The incidence of workers suffering from occupational injuries has alerted health professionals and entrepreneurs. Enterprises are looking for improvements in production systems by investments in quality, technological innovations and in human resources that are capable and committed to the objectives and targets of the enterprise. This research was developed in a pig slaughter-house in the city of Ipiranga-SC, in the labor of boning shoulder of the pig, because this is the activity that presents more registers of complaints of pain and also probability of development of occupational diseases with cause in the enterprise.Tools of Ergonomics Analysis of Work were used, from interviews with workers to the application of LEST method in the activity analyzed. The necessity of immediate intervention in the work station was shown in the results, because of the high risk of prejudice to the health of the workers. Improvement actions must be done to satisfy the ergonomics requirements of NR 17 standard, attending the enterprise interests in the occupational diseases prevention.