Ergonomics represents the science of designing products, processes, and systems to optimize human well-being and overall system performance, applying psychological and physiological principles to engineering and design. This discipline seeks to improve productivity, safety, and comfort by focusing on the interaction between humans and the things they use.
Physical Ergonomics: Human Anatomy and Activity
Physical ergonomics addresses human anatomy, anthropometry, physiology, and biomechanics relating them to physical activity. Principles of physical ergonomics optimize performance and prevent work-related disorders through design of both consumer and industrial products. This design reduces mechanisms behind mechanically induced acute and chronic musculoskeletal injuries or disorders, making it crucial for those with conditions such as arthritis or carpal tunnel syndrome, where pressure imperceptible to others can cause pain or device unusability.
One prevalent type of work-related harm is musculoskeletal disorder, where 1.8 million U.S. workers experience WRMDs annually. These disorders result in persistent pain, lost functional capacity, and work disability. Jobs with repetitive, forceful exertions, frequent heavy lifting, awkward positions, or vibrating equipment pose higher risks. OSHA found that ergonomics programs can cut workers’ compensation costs, increase productivity, and decrease employee turnover. Solutions involve awareness training, body positioning, furniture, equipment adjustments, and ergonomic exercises. Innovative workstations like sit-stand desks, treadmill desks, and cycle ergometers show promise in improving psychological well-being, though additional studies are needed to solidify health outcome improvements.
With collaborative robots and smart systems emerging in manufacturing, artificial agents enhance the physical ergonomics of human co-workers. During human-robot collaboration, robots use biomechanical models to adjust working configurations, accounting for human posture, joint torques, arm manipulability, and muscle fatigue.
Cognitive Ergonomics: Mental Processes and System Interaction
Cognitive ergonomics considers mental processes such as perception, memory, reasoning, and motor response, affecting interactions among humans and system elements. Relevant topics involve mental workload, decision-making, skilled performance, human reliability, work stress, and training, especially concerning human-system and human-computer interaction design.
Organizational Ergonomics: Socio-Technical System Optimization
Organizational ergonomics aims to optimize socio-technical systems, including organizational structures, policies, and processes. Pertinent topics include communication successes or failures, crew resource management, work design, work systems, teamwork, participatory ergonomics, cooperative work, virtual organizations, remote work, and quality management. Safety culture within engineering organizations links to engineering safety, with cultural dimensions like low power distance proving more conducive to safety. Organizations exhibiting concealment or lacking empathy demonstrate poorer safety cultures.
Citations:
Ergonomics, also known as human factors or human factors engineering (HFE), is the application of psychological and physiological principles to the engineering and design of products, processes, and systems. Primary goals of human factors engineering are to reduce human error, increase productivity and system availability, and enhance safety, health and comfort with a specific focus on the interaction between the human and equipment.
The field is a combination of numerous disciplines, such as psychology, sociology, engineering, biomechanics, industrial design, physiology, anthropometry, interaction design, visual design, user experience, and user interface design. Human factors research employs methods and approaches from these and other knowledge disciplines to study human behavior and generate data relevant to previously stated goals. In studying and sharing learning on the design of equipment, devices, and processes that fit the human body and its cognitive abilities, the two terms, "human factors" and "ergonomics", are essentially synonymous as to their referent and meaning in current literature.
The International Ergonomics Association defines ergonomics or human factors as follows:
Ergonomics (or human factors) is the scientific discipline concerned with the understanding of interactions among humans and other elements of a system, and the profession that applies theory, principles, data and methods to design to optimize human well-being and overall system performance.
Human factors engineering is relevant in the design of such things as safe furniture and easy-to-use interfaces to machines and equipment. Proper ergonomic design is necessary to prevent repetitive strain injuries and other musculoskeletal disorders, which can develop over time and can lead to long-term disability. Human factors and ergonomics are concerned with the "fit" between the user, equipment, and environment or "fitting a job to a person" or "fitting the task to the man". It accounts for the user's capabilities and limitations in seeking to ensure that tasks, functions, information, and the environment suit that user.
To assess the fit between a person and the technology being used, human factors specialists or ergonomists consider the job (activity) being performed and the demands on the user; the equipment used (its size, shape, and how appropriate it is for the task); and the information used (how it is presented, accessed, and modified). Ergonomics draws on many disciplines in its study of humans and their environments, including anthropometry, biomechanics, mechanical engineering, industrial engineering, industrial design, information design, kinesiology, physiology, cognitive psychology, industrial and organizational psychology, and space psychology.
English
Etymology
From ergo- (prefix indicating work) + -nomics (suffix indicating the rules
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