Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
3. The way in which the ergonomic intervention is conducted may produce
effects on the agents involved that go beyond the confines of the initial
situation. The sustainable alteration of relations with the professional
environment, fostering a greater ability of subjectivity to influence the
course of work, contributes to the development of empowerment.
Case study: An ergonomic intervention
in the food processing industry
The case of an intervention to design a warehouse for cutting fattened
ducks (Coutarel, 2004) is a good illustration of our proposals, since we
were able to reconstruct the history of the company involved over the
course of approximately 10 years.
The company was confronted both with a demand for increased pro-
duction and with increasingly numerous complaints related to MSDs.
Hence, it wished to include ergonomists in a project aiming to design a
new production warehouse, to both respond to its ambition of increas-
ing its production capacity and prevent MSDs. A project management
scheme, involving various stakeholders (workers, middle and upper man-
agement, contractors and institutional stakeholders) was implemented.
The duration of the project was 2½ years, starting with the early analyses
of work situations in existing situations, up to the implementation of the
new systems. The design of the new technical systems and new modes of
work organization (both for the management of everyday work and for
the management of the project) led to obtaining positive results for the
health of the workers (assessed through a clinical examination by the occu-
pational physician and through questionnaires) and for system perfor-
mance (evaluated using the company's performance indicators). In terms
of performance, results exceeded the initial goals and divided the time
before return on investment (ROI) by 3. Faced with this result, the com-
pany decided - in spite of our warnings - to buy the same production
line from the supplier, to implement it in its other production site. On this
second site, the expected goals in terms of performance and health were
never achieved.
A few months later, the company encountered some financial difficul-
ties, leading it to impose new standards for production and work organi-
zation. These standards questioned the design trade-offs that had been
made previously as a part of the ergonomic intervention. The situation of
the workers was disrupted, leading to a new surge in MSDs. In the end,
the experience of the workers in the course of the ergonomic intervention
made it more difficult to return to more traditional standards of opera-
tion, with respect to the usual practices in the industry (production rates,
product per worker per hour ratio, etc.). Returning to the company some
