human factors

Recently I gave a presentation at Safety 2013, ASSE’s professional development conference called the “Nuts and Bolts of Effective and Sustainable Ergonomics Programs”.  The “Nuts and Bolts” focused on the management system of ergonomics, not on the tools and methods used for ergonomic assessment.  I did this because the reasons most programs, whether ergonomics or other, fail is because they lack a management/business system.  Thinking of ergonomics in terms of a management system isn’t routine or common to most people who are responsible for ergonomics.  This was verified by the comments I

During the past two weeks or so the news has been abuzz with “digital dementia” affecting teens and 20-somethings.  Most of us are familiar with dementia that strikes the elderly but digital dementia is a new type of cognitive condition affecting those in their teens and early 20s.  According to multiple articles on this topic, digital dementia is characterized as the deterioration of brain function as a result of the overuse of digital technology, such as computers, smart phones and Internet use in general.  This excess use of technology leads to unbalanced brain development, as heavy user

Everyone loves free stuff—especially if it of value and makes our lives easier.  I’m always looking for tools that can make my job and/or that of my clients’ easier and quicker to assess ergonomic risk.  Auburn Engineers offers free versions of three common ergonomic assessment tools—REBA, RULA and NIOSH lifting equation which they call eREBA, eRULA and eLift respectively. 

It seems as though everyone is doing Lean these days—Lean Office, Lean Manufacturing, Lean this and Lean that.  Lean is a very good process improvement methodology started by Toyota.

In Part 1 we reviewed the changes that are occurring within the today’s workforce–the increased percentage of older workers.  With this in mind employers need to adapt their work environment to meet the needs of the workers–which coincidentally and most importantly benefits all ages of workers.

Ergonomic Workplace Design Recommendations

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“Active” workstations, such as treadmill desks, have become popular recently, especially since the emergence of “sitting disease”.  The negative effects associated with prolonged sitting are pretty well established, increasing risk of obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer.  Because people hear that sitting is “bad” they automatically think that having an active workstation, i.e.

Using a chainsaw is not part of my day job but recently became of part of my “weekend job”.

Last week I presented the first 5 reasons of my Top 10 list for why ergonomics (and lean) programs failure.  Here are the next five:

“We started off well but things have fallen by the wayside”.  “Employees were trained, they were enthusiastic and then things just started slipping away…”  The previous two statements are ones I’ve heard from companies who wanted to do ergonomics that then proceeded to get a program together and implemented who currently find themselves with a program “in name only”.  Common reasons given for demise of the program were that other priorities came up that took precedence or people just got tired of doing it.  There can be numerous reasons given for program failure but with a closer look can b