This paper examines the process of implementation of work-place ergonomics within thirteen plants of the largest division of an automobile manufacturing firm. The process began as plants reacted with varying degrees of conformance to institutional pressures to utilize ergonomics in job design. While all thirteen plants to some degree “adopted” an ergonomics program, varied conformity reactions ...

This study compared faculty perceptions and expectations of dental students' abilities using virtual reality simulation (VRS) to those who did not use virtual reality simulation (non-VRS) in an operative dentistry preclinical course. A sixteen-item survey with a ten-point rating scale and three open-ended questions asked about students' abilities in ergonomics, confidence level, performance, pr...

background/objective: musculoskeletal disorders (msds) are one of the most common causes of occupational injuries. this study was conducted with the objectives of determination of prevalence rate of msds and ergonomics assessment of the risk of msds among workers of a petrochemical company. methods: in this study, 261randomly selected workers in a petrochemical company with at least one year of...

The premise for this project is to implement an ergonomics program for the welding department of a car assembly company, considering that this area represents the highest occupational risk in relation to musculoskeletal injuries. The project also allows the demonstration of the different implementation processes of an ergonomics program; it also permits the determination of individual risks fac...

We discuss selected highlights of future human performance enhancement and their potential impact as for example envisioned by authors of Science Fiction and Fantasy literature, coming into reach of man now. With reference to a new taxonomy of ergonomics as introduced by Kenneth R. Boff, we discern “technointegration” and “stimulated bioenhancement” and allocate these to the realms of neural re...

As a marked increase in the number of musculoskeletal disorders was noted in many industrialized countries and more specifically in companies that require the use of hand tools, the French National Research and Safety Institute launched in 1999 a research program on the topic of integrating ergonomics into hand tool design. After a brief review of the problems of integrating ergonomics at the d...

Introduction The significant role of macroergonomics and important subsystems In the 90s’ decade, the interest in ergonomics issues in a wide sense grew in enterprise level, as a result of an increasing awareness of the importance of those matters for corporate core values such as productivity, quality and an inevitable change process [1]. Hendrick is attributed macroergonomics with the formali...

The Volkswagen Group operates and coordinates the activities of ergonomics from Wolfsburg in Germany and works with its contact persons of every plant and brand of the group towards an integrated proceeding relating to ergonomics. For the ergonomic process it is very important to consider the ergonomics in the whole production process, still from the beginning the conception and construction of...

This paper raises the issue of ergonomics' role in giving primacy to fully rational individual human actors in the creation of system failure, despite its commitment to see action as constrained by design and operational features of work. Reflecting on recent contributions to the journal, ergonomics' dilemma is considered against Enlightenment assumptions about individual human reason as the ro...

In this paper, we analyse two approaches that attempt to address how a human factors and ergonomics (HFE) perspective can contribute to the sustainability of the human race. We outline the principles, purposes and fields of application of ergoecology and green ergonomics, and thereafter deal with their context of emergence, and the overlaps in purpose, and principles. Shared values are deduced ...