Blog

Two of the questions I get asked over and over depending on my audience and their familiarity with the “what, why and how” I do what I do are:  “Just what exactly is ergonomics?” and/or “Just what is this lean thing about?”  To answer those two questions I decided to define them by using the words themselves.  Below are the meaning of ergonomics and lean:

Easy

Respect for people (user & misuser)

Great fit, function and looks

Optimize human and system performance

Neutral postures and positions

Everyone is talking about benefits of employee engagement and having employees participate in their jobs and how the work gets done.  Well run and successful ergonomics, lean, process improvement and wellness programs have a firm foundation in engaged employees.  But don’t you think employee engagement is over-rated?  Why on earth would companies want their employees to be engaged?

In part two of this blog series I gave an overview of Lean. Now we’re moving onto the second component of L.E.S.S.™ which is Ergonomics.

Ergonomics (synonymous with Human Factors) Defined

In part one of this blog series I went over the case for integrating two common and two not as common methodologies for business systems improvement: Lean, Ergonomics, Six Sigma and Systems Thinking. Although most are probably familiar with all four of them I think it’s worthwhile to spend a blog on each one in order to highlight their definition and purpose, common tools and uses.