Getting together on design

Press, 15 August 1980, Page 10

Getting together on design

“Ergonomics and committee design” — it sounded a little like double Dutch to at least some members' of a party who visited the Meat Industry Research Institute at Hamilton recently, but as it turned out it seemed to make good sense. It involves taking into account things like the average height of workers in the design of works areas and plant to facilitate the most efficient work of the workers and efficient operation of the plant. A committee design approach developed out of an exercise that the institute was asked to take part in last year, which involved the combining and rationalisation of the boning room operations of two organisations. A three-party com■mittee, representative _ of management and the union with the institute acting as chairman and design consultant was set up. The project was confined to design, human factors and technical considerations. Management was responsible for the general .layout, specified building size and expected throughput, and the union members were responsible for the design of detail, including, for example, rail heights and work station lay-outs. The union members were given a basic introduction to ergonomic ■design concepts, which has to do with the use of energy, and shown how to take and apply appropriate measurements. The committee was responsible for the direction of the project and authorised experiments with

equipment.- Each idea was tested on “mock-up” rigs and was approved only when all the users were satisfied. A measu.ing rig .was also built and used to obtain 10 measurements, which were then applied to ergonomic design of equipment and these will form part of an on-going collection of data for future equipment design. The annual report of the institute said that the study also demonstrated the ease with which union delegates could carry out such measurements. “The underlying philosophy of this approach is that each worker should be the manager of his or her own job and work area.

“Ergonomics and its use within the working environment has an important application within the meat industry, where much of the work is manual and highly skilled,” Dr Graeme Longdrill, head of the meat processing section of'the engineering division at the institute, told the visitors.