Over the remainder of the year I’m going to blog about some of the lessons I’ve learned through the years through practicing, facilitating and consulting on ergonomics, lean and process improvement. Today is the first blog in this series on “Lessons Learned”.
Determining and demonstrating the value of your ergonomics initiative for specific engineering improvements are commonly requested. Unfortunately, many of us struggle to even begin to justify improvements, let alone choose a meaningful calculator to demonstrate the benefits of improving workplace conditions. A quick Google search turns up available calculators: Equipois Return on Investment (ROI) Calculator and
In my previous blog I discussed the indisputable fact that working extended hours causes worker fatigue and lowers performance. This was regardless of the time of day that was worked. Another aspect to consider is the effect of shift work on worker performance. I will define shift work as either the night shift or rotation shifts working normal amount of work hours (8-10 hours/shift). A recent study of Canadian workers shows some interesting results in regards to work injuries. The study covered a 10 year period, 1996-2006, and examined the injury rates of workers differentiated by the
Are you aware of the National Prevention Council? Its formation was part of the 2010 Affordable Care Act. The council is chaired by the US Surgeon General and the other members are the leaders of 17 federal departments, agencies and offices. The council’s purpose is to promote prevention and wellness. The council released its National Prevention Strategy in June 2011. According to Surgeon General Regina Benjamin, MD, the strategy will “move us from a system of sick care to one based on wellness and prevention”. She goes on to say, “We also know that many of the strongest predictors of
One of the things I frequently do as a consultant for my clients are ergonomic assessments because of this I often get asked about what an ergonomic assessment is and what does it involve? Well, I hope to answer this question and some others about ergo assessments in this blog series. Of course, ergo assessments can vary as what I look at and analyze depends on what it is I’m specifically assessing but the nuts and bolts of an assessment are the same.
Basic components of an assessment
The second phase of creating a project brand, in our case an injury prevention (IP) project, is planning. This is the four blog in the series on Branding: Why All Projects Need One. In the last blog I discussed the first phase in the brand campaign which was the pitch. Phase 2 is the PLAN. This is fairly self-explanatory—the Plan identifies the project goals, activities and steps involved. It is also defines who is involved from the key stakeholders to those who will have minimal but necessary involvement. The roles and responsibilities of each person/group involved defined as well a
As a consultant, I find myself asking people their beliefs about ergonomics and find their responses to be quite interesting. It tells me that most have a very limited view of what ergonomics is and where it belongs within their company.
One of my recent clients that had me analyze the design of their products also asked to me assess the human factors of the brand and associated marketing and instructional material. What was very interesting for me was to learn about the process they undertook when developing a brand campaign for their products. That experience serves as part of the basis for this blog. There is much to be learned and can be applied from an external customer focused branding/marketing campaign to an internal project branding/marketing campaign. The framework and phases involved serve as the foundation o
Brands. All organizations have them. Every product has one. Nearly every service has one. Even some people have them (think Michael Jordan, Oprah Winfrey). I’ve worked in some companies and some of their customer service and wellness programs have them. But rarely, if ever, do ergonomics projects have them. Why is that and why is it important?
What is ergonomics? What is human factors? How can human factors and ergonomics (HF/E) help my business?
