Multimedia tool set for teaching ergonomic analysis skills

Abstract

Ergonomics remains an important issue in industry today. Preventing and solving harmful ergonomic situations in the workplace can lead to greater productivity, profit, and employee moral. Currently, the School of Continuing Education at the Georgia Institute of Technology presents a week long course in ergonomics for industry personnel. This course covers basic ergonomic topics, including anthropometric charts, data on human limitations, and the principles of workplace design, and how to conduct a survey of the workplace for harmful ergonomic activities. An important aspect of this course is learning to apply the basic ergonomic data while conducting a survey, that is, using the knowledge of human abilities and limitations to identify harmful ergonomic activities that are present while a worker is doing his or her job. We have proposed, built, and evaluated a prototype multimedia instructional system, called ErgoTrainer. ErgoTrainer aids students, both students taking classes like the one taught at Georgia Tech and students learning on their own, in gaining basic ergonomic knowledge and learning the skill of job surveillance. The evaluation was successful and the results were positive.