HUMAN MODELING BENEFITS IN WORKSTATION DESIGN

Human modeling has been used for a number of years, mainly by the aeronautical and automobile industries, to design products and means of production. Are the benefits of using human modeling for these companies transferable to other industrial sectors, mainly for designing and correcting tools or common workstations? If so, in which specific contexts? In the framework of a research project to answer these questions, a series of hypotheses was developed, based on the context and expected consequences of using human modeling. Case studies were carried out to verify these hypotheses and thus determine the contextual elements favorable to the use of human modeling in designing or correcting workstations. The preliminary results of this study verified some of the predefined hypotheses. First, as expected, human modeling allows more rapid iterations for validating the concepts considered. The results also show that the more complex the problem workstation, the more effective the validation using human modeling. The results also suggest that the user’s ergonomic competence has a direct impact on the quality of the solution, whether human modeling is used or not. Finally, human modeling improves the quality of communication with managers and workers