Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Therefore, activity ergonomics is opposed to a certain way of organizing
work when it observes that the strict application of standards is ineffective.
This was pointed out even in the first ergonomic interventions ever
performed in France, such as the intervention in 1969 in a television man-
ufacturing company (Laville et al., 1972). Workers picked small television
parts from about 30 boxes placed in front of them (e.g. wires, resistors,
diodes, capacitors) of all shapes, colours and sizes before inserting them
within a 90-second time span into small holes on a metal 'plate', advanc-
ing at a speed of 1 meter per minute on a conveyor belt. At the time, the
dominant critiques of Taylorism - particularly that developed as early as
1956 by Georges Friedmann - pointed out the monotony of work related to
the repetitiveness of gestures. Indeed, this criticism denounced the effects,
but not the supposed equivalence between the work that is supposed to
be done (the standard) and the work that is done in reality (the activity),
which it therefore seemed to validate. Yet, researchers in ergonomics
discovered something else. The modes of operation implemented by the
female workers, in fact, coped with a wide variety of situations where the
small parts were inserted and extracted. These situations were related to
quality defects or difficulties in separating the components. All of them
mobilized a more sustained attention, complex cognitive processes and
more intense muscular effort than had been 'planned'. The rhythm had
been calculated for supposedly simple gestures, and not to manage these
difficulties. The impact of the mobilization on the health of workers had
become much greater as a result (Teiger, 2008).
These observations and explanations are still valid today, and they
still upset the convictions of most economic decision-makers. According
to them, the standardization of prescribed work justifies the relevance
and effectiveness of investments. To ergonomics, however, standardiza-
tion as a project is not relevant, since it constitutes a limitation or even a
hindrance to workers seeking to achieve expected results (process safety,
quality, time, etc.). Obtaining the expected results may rely on automa-
tion, if the production system is stable enough to be entirely formalized;
failing that, it must rely on a system where humans deal with the part
of the system that is not or cannot be mastered, using informal rules that
they are in charge not of applying, but of mobilizing in order to manage
the risks (de Terssac, 2012).
Such observations are all the more topical in a service-based, immate-
rial economy. In the dynamics of a service
*
, the 'beneficiary' - i.e. a customer,
*
It is important to make a distinction between
service sectors
and the
service approach
, which
can apply to any activity - agricultural, manufacturing, services; in other words, to distin-
guish the industrial logic (which can permeate down to the service sector) from service-
based logic (which may inspire evolutions in the organization of the industry itself) (du
Tertre and Hubault, 2008).
