Cognitive Ergonomics of Assembly Work from a Job Demands-Resources Perspective: Three Qualitative Case Studies.

In manufacturing companies, cognitive processing is required from assembly workers to perform correct and timely assembly of complex products, often with varied specifications and high quality demands. This paper explores assembly operators' perceptions of cognitive/mental workload to provide a holistic understanding of the work conditions that affect cognitive demands and performance. While the physical loading aspects of assembly work are well known, most empirical literature dealing with cognitive/mental loading in manufacturing tends to examine a few particular aspects, rather than address the issue with a holistic system view. This semi-structured interview study, involving 50 industrial assembly operators from three Swedish companies, explores how assemblers perceive that their cognitive performance and well-being is influenced by a wide variety of factors within the context of mechanical product assembly. The interview transcripts were analysed using a priori coding, followed by bottom-up Thematic Analysis. The results indicate that a variety of systemic effects on assemblers' cognitive performance can be classified as job demands or resources. Quite often, the absence of a resource mirrors a related demand, and "good assembly conditions", as described by the interviewees, often re-frame demands as desirable challenges that foster motivation and positive feelings towards the work. The identified demands and resources stem from task design, timing, physical loading, intrinsic and extrinsic motivators, social teamwork and the product's "interface" design. Despite organisational differences and conditions between the three companies that took part in the study, the results are largely consistent.

ACD3 as a framework for design of ergonomic workplaces.

BACKGROUND: Workplace Ergonomics and Human Factors (E/HF) remains as relevant and important as ever to respond to contemporary workplace design challenges. Therefore, E/HF expertise must be involved in early and appropriate phases of the workplace design process, in order to leverage user needs and requirements to constrain the proposed design solution. In this process, design decisions are made. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this article is to describe the use of a systems-theoretical framework as a guide in collaborative workplace design, focussing on planning and documenting which decisions and activities should involve E/HF expertise. METHODS: As this is a conceptual paper, its method is to synthesise a framework from a combination of design process methodology-, general systems theory- and sociotechnical systems literature. RESULTS: The framework organises the design decisions to be made into hierarchical abstraction levels and cross-cuts them into five perspectives from which the design problem can be viewed holistically. CONCLUSIONS: The ACD3 framework is intended as an enabler of many types of design, including the design of work systems. It provides a framework that allows all stakeholders to converge around design decisions that ensure that the work system is optimised to human characteristics and the activity to be performed.

'Power base' tactics for workplace change - an interview study with industrial engineers and ergonomists.

The work activities of industrial engineers (IEs) and ergonomists drive workplace changes. The purpose of this study is to compare the work practices of the two professions and examine (1) how IEs and ergonomists gain influence over workplace changes and (2) whether there are prevailing types of intentional interaction behaviours called Power bases (PB) present in the interaction tactics they employ. The study identified key behavioural strategies used by the interviewees to successfully influence workplace changes; these were then mapped to their corresponding PB. Results showed that IEs and ergonomists were successfully influencing workplace changes using several tactics across the spectrum of PB, with the exception of Reward and Coercion. The study concludes with a list of recommended workplace change agent tactics, and proposes that a PB 'analytical lens' can serve to increase the budding ergonomists' critical and analytical skills when considering possible workplace change tactics. Practitioner Summary: This interview study examines how workplace ergonomics change agents, represented by the two professions: industrial engineers and ergonomists, perceive and exercise their capacity to influence workplace change. Key behavioural tactics that interviewees have found successful are reported, alongside effects on short- and long-term relations with other workplace-influencing stakeholders.