IND 3600 - Ergonomics and Work Methods

• Describe and explain how people fit into technological system
• Recognize and assess workplace environmental factors including lighting, noise, and temperature
• Recognize the capabilities and limitations of human perceptual-motor capabilities
• Recognize the capabilities and limitations of human cognitive functioning and why people make errors
• Explain the negative effects that poor work system design and poor product design have on humans
• Recognize the human indicators of fatigue and stress
• Define the ethical application of human factors in designing products, jobs, and processes
• Recognize and evaluate ergonomic deficiencies in different environments (e.g., office, manufacturing, and classrooms)
• Design and redesign tasks and workstations to fit employees
• Use different methods, including time and motion studies utilizing a variety of techniques involving graphical analysis tools, traditional stop-watch time studies, predetermined time systems, and work sampling
• Develop work standards and describe the advantages and limitations associated with standard data systems
• Generate and evaluate ergonomic solutions and identify improvement opportunities based on work methods analysis and work measurement
• Explain how labor reporting and incentive systems relate to methods analysis and work measurement
• Demonstrate how automation and human factors/ergonomics can be integrated using data science (and other tools/methods) to overcome human limitations
• Write reports that describe human performance
• Understand the diverse composition of different enterprise environments
• Organize and convey project information in different modalities (i.e., presentation and formal technical report)

• Basic knowledge and understanding of statistics including distributions, variability, means, standard deviations, and percentiles
• Basic knowledge and understanding of inferential statistics (i.e., correlations, t-tests, ANOVA, regression analysis)

• Introduction to and history of human factors and ergonomics, as well as work methods and work methods improvement
• Human factors research methods
• Vision, audition and other senses
• Displays and controls
• Human information processing and memory
• Basic anatomy, physiology, and biomechanics
• Physical workload, heat, and cold stress
• Anthropometry and design, including work posture
• Manual materials handling and design
• Cumulative trauma disorders
• Workspace design
• Training and cognitive task analysis
• Task, organization, and job analysis
• Time studies and predetermined time studies
• Standard data systems
• Work sampling
• Physiological work measurement
• Shift work
• Labor reporting
• Accidents, human error, and safety
• Incentives
• Macro-ergonomics (i.e., job and organization design)
• Increasing productivity
• Human factors and automation systems
• Engineering ethics

• The course includes a weekly two-hour lab where the students will be engaged in demonstrating their understanding of the lecture topics
• Lab time will also be used to work on course project