Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting

When scheduling work times, detailed information is often not considered regarding the shiftwork history of a worker. Instead, available workers may be chosen according to factors such as seniority and/or work hours over the previous day or two. This can be a dangerous practice, as it may result in irregular, erratic, and unpredictable shift schedules that can lead to serious health and safety consequences for the worker and the public. The current research addressed these concerns by asking judges to consider both the acute and chronic impact of work schedules. Individuals evaluated graphical representations of 30 days of freight train engineer schedules for their impact on worker well-being. While judges' evaluations were in agreement with each other, their judgments were not related to engineer mood estimates of their own well-being. It is, of course, possible that predictions of well-being would be more accurate if the judges were provided with additional specific information about each worker.

A field study was conducted of 40 office workers to determine if seating posture and task differ between job type. Participants were observed through videotape within their own workstations. Torso posture, upper extremity posture and task were coded using event-recording software. Each job type was observed for approximately 31 hours. The job types were categorized as administrative, customer service, executive and technical/professional. Behaviors were examined as frequency of occurrence, duration of occurrence, and percentage of the working hour that the behavior was held. Technical/professional workers spent a significantly greater (p<.05) percentage of the working hour with the mouse in their hand than the other job types. Customer service workers spent a greater (p<.01) percentage of the working hour reading the VDT and typing on their keyboard than the other job types. They also read the VDT more frequently (p<.01) than the other job types. In terms of postures, customer service workers sit with their arms in a neutral posture for a greater (p<.01) percentage of the working hour than the other job types.

This paper describes a Case Study in which a “macroergonomic” approach (Hendrick and Kleiner, 2001) was used to redesign the process and implement technology in support of the process of implementing office space. A project involving a 25,000-square-foot renovation of existing space, with 120 workstations and 100 employees was used as the basis to test the redesigned process and technology implementation. We concurrently redesigned the personnel and technology subsystems (see DeGreene, 1973), as opposed to having a pre-defined technology application drive the solution (Hendrick, 1995). Using a participatory ergonomics approach, we involved the employees who would be affected by changes to their work process to understand and contribute to the re-design.

Through structured interviews, interactive discussions and observations, we redesigned the process from; design and layout of workstations through installation of furniture. Using business process modeling and simulation software, we modeled the “before” and “after” processes, and collected detailed measures of time and cost improvements. We found significant process performance improvements in Wait Time, Re-Work of Errors, and Cost reductions.

New technology is dramatically changing the workplace in order to allow companies to increase efficiency, productivity, quality, safety, and overall profitability. An effective new technology implementation is necessary in order for companies to compete successfully in the global marketplace. Time and money wasted on unsuccessful and improper new technology implementation is counterproductive to the overall goal of improving the competitiveness and profitability of the company. Therefore this new technology challenges the current state of traditional implementation methods and techniques. To effectively utilize these new technologies it is best to consider all of the factors involved in the implementation process, such as: new technology characteristics, organization structure, task factors, and environmental characteristics, and most importantly the human elements involved. It is also recommended to utilize a cooperative approach to new technology implementation, which relies heavily on soliciting employee input and participation throughout the entire process. By taking a holistic “big picture” planned view of the situation; and being sensitive to the interactions that exist; it is hoped that the new technology can be implemented in the most effective way possible.