ARTICULATING ERGONOMICS AND ENGINEERING DESIGN TO DEVELOP HEALTHY AND SAFE WORK ENVIRONMENTS

Abstract: The main purpose of this paper is to emphasize the need for integration between ergonomics and engineering design to develop healthy and safe work environments and to suggest some requirements to promote this integration. In industrial contexts, ergonomics methods are traditionally applied for evaluating the risks of a specific workplace or task. However, to contribute to the conception of work environments, ergonomics should be articulated with the engineering design processes. To promote and facilitate this articulation, ergonomists should be part of the design teams, communicate with specialists and understand the context in which they are working. This articulation should be done as early as possible, and be maintained in all of the development stages of the engineering design process. Ergonomists should provide competitive criteria, apply compatible methods according to the specific goals of the project and evaluate the feasibility of their proposals considering the current constraints