INTRODUCTION TO ANALYSIS, DESIGN, AND OPERATION

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INTRODUCTION

According to the Board of Certification in Professional Ergonomics (BCPE 21000), ergonomics is a body of knowledge about human abilities, human limitations, and other human characteristics that are relevant to design. Ergonomic design is the application of this body of knowledge to the design of tools, machines, systems, tasks, jobs, and environments for safe, comfortable, and effective human use. The underlying philosophy of ergonomics is to design work systems where job demands are within the capacities of the workforce. Ergonomic job design focuses on fitting the job to capabilities of workers by, for example, eliminating occurrence of nonnatural postures at work, reduction of excessive strength requirements, improvements in work layout, design of hand tools, or optimizing work / rest requirements (Karwowski 1992; Karwowski and Salvendy 1998; Karwowski and Marras 1999).

Ergonomics is seen today as a vital component of the value-adding activities of the company, with well-documented cost–benefit aspects of the ergonomics management programs (GAO 1997). A company must be prepared to accept a participative culture and utilize participative techniques in implementation of work design principles. The job design-related problems and consequent intervention should go beyond engineering solutions and include all aspects of business processes, including product design, engineering and manufacturing, quality management, and work organizational issues, along the side of task design or worker education and training (Karwowski and Salvendy 1999; Karwowski and Marras 1999; Genaidy et al. 1999).

This chapter deals primarily with work analysis and design, as well as related human performance on physical tasks. The information about cognitive and other human performance aspects can be found in other chapters of this Handbook.

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