The discipline of ergonomics studies the interaction between man and the designed technical and organizational environment. In product ergonomics, this knowledge is used to develop user-friendly products and in production ergonomics to design human-friendly (production) processes. Beside social goals, ergonomics can contribute to economic goals of an organization. With user-friendly products, a company can deliver benefits to its customers, which exceed those of competing products. With human-friendly production processes, a company can increase labor productivity and consequently can reach important cost-reductions. The growing consciousness of the importance of humans (customers and workers) for the success of organizations, implies that ergonomics can have a strategic value for the management of organizations. In this paper a model is presented how ergonomics can be integrated in the decision-making and design processes of organizations, and examples are given to show possible business benefits.Competitive advantage, labor productivity, human centered design, product development, process development

Jan Dul

English

Research Papers in Economics

HUMAN FACTORSS IN ORGANIZATIONAL DESIGN AND MANAGEMENT – VII
H. Luczak and K. J. Zink (Editors) 2003.
The Strategic Value of Ergonomics for
Companies
Jan DUL
Rotterdam School of Management,Erasmus University Rotterdam,
Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Abstract.  The  discipline  of  ergonomics  studies  the  interaction
between  man  and  the  designed  technical  and  organizational
environment.  In  product  ergonomics,  this  knowledge  is  used  to
develop  user-friendly  products  and  in  production  ergonomics  to
design human-friendly (production) processes.  Beside  social  goals,
ergonomics  can  contribute  to  economic  goals  of  an  organization.
With user-friendly products, a company can deliver  benefits  to  its
customers, which exceed those of competing products. With human-
friendly  production  processes,  a  company  can  increase  labor
productivity and consequently can reach important cost-reductions.
The growing consciousness of the importance of humans (customers
and  workers)  for  the  success  of  organizations,  implies  that
ergonomics  can  have  a  strategic  value  for  the  management  of
organizations.
In this paper a model is presented that shows the strategic value of
ergonomics. Examples are given to illustrate this.
Keywords: Competitive advantage, labor productivity, human
centered design, product development, process development
1. Introduction
According to the formal description of ergonomics, approved by the International
Ergonomics Association, ergonomics deals with the design of products and processes in
order  to  improve  ‘human  well-being’  as  well  as  ‘overall  system  performance’.
Improvement of human well-being can be considered as the social goal of ergonomics,
which is important for the users of products and processes (consumers and workers).
Similarly,  improvement  of  overall  system  performance  -although  this  term  is  rather
vague-, can be considered as the economic goal of ergonomics, which is important for
the management of an organization that develops, produces or uses products.
This  paper  elaborates  on  the  economic  dimension  of  ergonomics.  A  model  is
presented which shows how ergonomics can be positioned in the value chain approach,originally  proposed  by  (Porter  1985).  This  approach  is  widely  used  in  the  business
community.  With  the  value  chain  model,  the  strategic  value  of  ergonomics  for
companies can be explained. Two examples are given to illustrate this value: an example
of product ergonomics, and an  example  of  production  ergonomics.  Furthermore,  the
paper  discusses  the  role  of  ergonomists  to  stimulate  the  use  of  ergonomics  in
organizations.
2. The Value Chain Model
In management, a business process is usually described as a chain of value-adding
activities.  The  upper  part  of  Fig.  1  shows  that  the  process  of  product  creation  and
product realization can be characterized by the chain: research, product development,
process development, purchasing, production, and distribution.
The lower part of Fig. 1 shows that product ergonomics can add value to the process of
product creation (research, product development), and that production ergonomics can
add  value  to  the  process  of  product  realization  (process  development,  purchasing,
production, and distribution).
In  product  creation,  the  management  (the  marketing  manager,  for  example)  can
decide to implement an ergonomic strategy, which implies that a competitive advantage
can be reached by developing user-friendly products.
Figure 1: Ergonomics as part of the value chain of product creation and realization
(Adapted from Dul 2003a).
Purchasing
Process
development Production
Product
development Distribution Research
Ergo-
system
Ergo-
innovation
￿￿￿￿￿￿￿￿￿￿￿￿￿￿￿ ￿ ￿￿ ￿￿￿￿￿￿￿￿ ￿￿￿￿￿￿￿￿￿￿ ￿ ￿￿
Differentiation strategy 
with  user-friendly
products
Cost strategy with 
productive, human-friendly
processes
Ergonomic 
Product development
Ergonomic products
Ergonomic process development
Ergonomic processes
Ergo-
strategy
￿￿￿￿￿￿￿￿￿￿￿￿￿￿ ￿￿￿￿￿￿￿￿￿￿￿ ￿ ￿￿￿￿ ￿￿
MANAGER
USER
DESIGNERIn product realization, the management (the production manager, for example) can
decide  for  an  ergonomic  strategy  as  well.  This  implies  that  with  human-friendly
production  systems,  the  labor  force  is  more  productive  and  that  acceptable  working
conditions can be reached.
Both ergonomics strategies can be implemented by using an ergonomics innovation
process  in  which  product  or  process  designers  and  ergonomists,  as  well  as  other
stakeholders including users, are involved. This should lead to ergonomic products and
production processes for users such as consumers and workers.
Organizations will give attention to ergonomics if:
- Customers demand ergonomics products or processes;
- Authorities define ergonomics requirements for the design;
- Designers give attention to ergonomics,  based on their views on quality;
- Managers appreciate the strategic value of human centered design.
Below, two examples are given of the latter consideration, which also illustrates the
model of Fig 1.
3. Examples
3.1 Product ergonomics
In 1993, AB Sandvik Saws and Tools (part of the Swedish Sandvik organization)
decided to have a specific ergonomic diffentiation strategy to reach a worldwide leading
position in professional hand tools (White and Birkinshaw, 2000). Part of the strategy
was an 11 step ergonomics product design approach, developed by Ergonomi Design
Groupen  AB  (Bobjer  et  al.,  1995).  This  approach  included  three  steps  with  user
participation.  In the past few years, different hand tools have been developed in this
way, and introduced on the market as Ergo tools.
  After the introduction of the Ergo-tools, the results of AB Sandvik Saws and Tools
in 1995 showed an increased market share in markets where the company had already a
good position, whereas no effects were seen in new markets, including the USA. In
1999, AB Sandvik Saws and Tools was taken over by Snap-On, Inc. from the USA, and
the name of the company was changed into Bahco Group AB.
In its annual report of 2001, Snap-On reports an improvement of its market position,
due to the introduction of new ergonomic tools from Bahco. The annual report of 2002
states  that  the  growing  market  interest  in  ergonomics,  can  help  to  stimulate  further
growth  of  the  company,  and  that  the  innovative  power  of  Snap-On  in  the  field  of
ergonomics is a differential competitive advantage.3.2 Production ergonomics
Famostar Emergency Lighting BV in The Netherlands develops, assembles and sells
emergency  lighting.  The  company  is  market  leader  The  Netherlands.  It  produces
200.000 systems each year and is rapidly growing.
In  the  old  assembly  process,  a  batch  of  parts  were  laid  down  on  a  table,  and
assembled  and  packed  manually  by  workers  who  walked  along  the  table.  Finished
products were placed manually on a pallet for further transportation.
Due to an increase of the product volume and due to lack of space, a project was
started  to  redesign  the  assembling  process  (Rhijn  et  al.,  2002).    The  batch-type  of
production  was  changes  into  a  flow-type  of  production.  Sitting  workplaces  were
introduced,  which  allowed  picking  parts  from  boxes  close  to  the  body,  and  lifting
equipment was introduced to reduce manual lifting.
The project showed the following results: labor productivity in terms of average
number of products per person per day increased 69%, space requirement decreased
45%, manual lifting load reduced from 129% to 51% of the maximum allowable load,
and  arm  posture  worsened  because  the  workers  worked  12%  longer  with  a  20-60
degrees elevated arm posture. Furthermore, the workers experienced a more complete
working task, and an improved psychological work climate, since they were involved in
the development of solutions. Overall, the results show that the assembling process was
more productive and more human-friendly, although some nuances were found.
4. Discussion
The model and the examples show that ergonomics can have a strategic value for
companies when the top-management decides for an differentiation strategy with user-
friendly products (see Bahco example) or for a cost-strategy with human-friendly and
labor productive processes (see Famostar example).
However, most organizations are not aware of such strategic value of ergonomics.
Perrow  (1983)  mentioned  several  reasons  including,  the  relatively  small  number  of
ergonomists that is employed in companies, the lack of control of these ergonomists
over  budgets  and  people,  the  qualitative  nature  of  ergonomics,  and  the  image  of
ergonomists as protectors of workers. Hendrick (1996) adds that there are too many
examples of bad ergonomics, that many ergonomists presume that others are convinced
of the importance of ergonomics as well, and that the benefits of ergonomics are not
well documented. Furthermore, the following additional reasons could be mentioned:
-  Most ergonomics activities deal with the social dimension of ergonomics
and give less attention to its economic dimension;
-  Ergonomics primarily deals with minimization of problems, rather than
maximization of opportunities;
-  Much ergonomics knowledge is available at operational level, however at
tactical and strategic level the discipline is not yet well developed;-  And last but no least, in general, ergonomists do not communicated their
knowledge  towards  the  management  and  business  community.  An
example of this is that only 47 ergonomics articles have been written in 97
leading management journals during the last 10 years (Dul, 2003b).
Recent  efforts  to  integrate  macro-ergonomics  and  micro-ergonomics  (e.g.  Zink,
2000)  may  help  to  improve  this  situation,  and  may  stimulate  that  more  managers
appreciate the strategic value of ergonomics.
5. References
1.  Bobjer, O., Bergkvist en H. Lohmiller WR., 1995. Development of prototype tools
for field testing. Proceedings of the 2
nd International Conference on Prevention of
Musculoskeletal Disorders, Montreal, Canada.
2.  Dul, J., 2003a. "De mens is de maat van alle dingen". Over mensgericht ontwerpen
van  producten  en  processen.  ("Man  is  the  measure  of  all  things".  On  human
centrered design of products and processes). Inaugural address. Erasmus Research
Institute of Management, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
3.  Dul, J., 2003b. Ergonomics in management. Ergonomics in the digital age. In :
Proceedings  of  the  Triennial  Congress  of  the  International  Ergonomics
Association, Seoul, South-Korea.
4.  Hendrick, H.W., 1996. Good ergonomics is good economics. Proceedings of the
Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 40
th Annual Meeting. Human Factors and
Ergonomics Society, Santa Monica CA, USA.
5.  Perrow,  C.,  1983.  The  organizational  context  of  human  factors  engineering.
Administrative Science Quarterly 28 (4), 521-541.
6.  Porter,  M.E.,  1985.  Competitive  advantage:  creating  and  sustaining  superior
performance. Free Press, New York, USA.
7.  Rhijn, J.W. van, Looze, M.P. de, Groenesteijn, L, Groot, M.D. de, Vink, P. &
Tuinzaad, G.H., 2002. Efficient flow and human centred assembly. The success of
an interactive approach. In: Humans in a Complex Environment. Proceedings of
the  34th  Annual  Congress  of  the  Nordic  Ergonomics  Society,  Linköping
University, Linköping, Sweden, pp. 805-810.
8.  White, R.E. , Birkinshaw J., 2000. AB Sandvik Saws & Tools: The Ergo Strategy.
In: Crossan, M.M., Fry, J.N., Killing, J.P., Morrison, A.J. & White, R.E. (eds.),
Strategic Management: A Canadian Casebook. 5th ed. (pp180-199), Prentice Hall,
Scarborough ON, Canada.
9.  Zink,  K.J.,  2000.  Ergonomics  in  the  past  and  the  future:  from  a  German
perspective to an international one. Ergonomics 43 (7): 920-930.

AB Sandvik Saws & Tools: The Ergo Strategy.

Competitive advantage: creating and sustaining superior performance.

Development of prototype tools for field testing.

Efficient flow and human centred assembly. The success of an interactive approach. In: Humans in a Complex Environment.

Ergonomics in management. Ergonomics in the digital age.

Ergonomics in the past and the future: from a German perspective to an international one.

Good ergonomics is good economics.

The organizational context of human factors engineering.

The strategic value of ergonomics for companies

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The strategic value of ergonomics for companies

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