Even though the word is widely used, it is a little or poorly understood concept. Who has never heard of ergonomic seats in the media? It is a word used as a sales argument for many products, but this reference to ergonomics is still very restrictive, insofar as it refers only to the notion of "comfort".
The term ergonomics (from the Greek ergon: work and nomos: law) has been officially adopted on the occasion of the creation of the first ergonomics society, the Ergonomice Research Society, founded in 1949 by British engineers, physiologists and sociologists, in order to “ adapt work to man ”.
In this optics of adapting the machine and the workstations to man, of improving working conditions, ergonomics has studied intensively:
The influence of man's environment when working, that is, thermal, sound, light environments and their consequences on health in order to conceive individual and collective means of protection.
Anthropometric and biomechanical data, in order to conceive the jobs taking into account the measurement of bone segments, the amplitude of joint movements, among others, with a desire to avoid difficult and tiresome postures for the worker.
The characteristics of the muscular effort, in order to establish evaluation criteria of the "load" of work, appealing to techniques such as the measurement of oxygen consumption, the recording of heart rate, etc.
The influence of work schedules on health, based on knowledge taken from chronobiology.
The psychophysiological characteristics, in order to conceive signaling and measurement instruments that solve problems of vision, surveillance and attention efficiency.
But over the years ergonomics has been evolving under the influence of technological advancement.
The ergonomics of "modern times" go beyond the restrictive framework of hygiene and safety conditions, to focus on the efficiency of production systems.
According to the ergonomics specialist Pierre I. Fichet, the concept refers to "the putting into practice of a set of knowledge on the functioning of the man in activity, in order to use it to conceive equipment, tasks or production systems".
Actually ergonomics today considers the work situation as a system. This is, in effect, the result of a conjunction of factors that depend both on the conception of the means of work, and on the characteristics of the organization or those of the personnel.
Very often when difficulties arise, their origins have as much to do with the conjunction of various factors as with their lack of adequacy, the reasons for which must be determined.
This is achieved through the so-called "ergonomic intervention" by a specialized consultant, for the analysis of the ergonomic intervention methodology.
This perspective is based on the analysis of people's work activity.
The purpose of this analysis is to identify the set of factors that determine this activity, to use them to reduce risks and provide solutions to the various malfunctions observed and which may pose obstacles to production, to the operational safety of the facilities or to safety. of people.
