Lean Ergonomics—an empirical combination of Management Science and Ergonomics

Abstract

AbstractThis paper presents Lean Ergonomics (LE) as an employee- and process-related method in a practice-oriented way. Stagnations in economic improvements of the processes, combined with known, high stresses of the basic workers on the shopfloor with ambiguous starting points of ergonomic measures hold broad analysis and optimization potential. This can be shown exploratively based on LE. 12 representative work processes at large reactors in the chemical industry form the study area. Each individual work process receives a Lean Ergonomics data set consisting of time data [standard deviation in min & %], objective ergonomics [EAWS] and subjective ergonomics [Borg, NASA-TLX; both pseudonymized]. Two process-identical production halls are provided, which is why KFzA (short questionnaire for work analysis) is also collected anonymously for additional general analysis of work system design. Consequently resulting in a diverse data structure of quantifiable person-related methods, objective, process-related loads and economically relevant, likewise process-related KPIs.