Ergonomic aspects of product development and innovation

Abstract

Increasing requirements for occupational health and safety emphasize the importance of ergonomics in the development of products and production systems intended directly for human consumption. However, the matter of respecting ergonomic criteria and standards in the product development of mass-produced items is regularly underestimated or even ignored today. A lot of research studies focus on the ergonomic factors of the working environment, but very few researchers deal with product development ergonomics. The aim of this paper is to investigate how seriously ergonomic parameters are considered by designers and industrial innovators developing new products. This study focuses especially on Czech industrial companies, accompanied by several comparisons with other European Union countries. The official statistical data about the actual state of innovation and the aspects of product development most often discussed in the Czech Republic and other European Union countries, as well as the results from the original qualitative investigation within several selected Czech manufacturing companies, are used to gain the required outcomes of the study. The first results proved that ergonomic analysis is not automatically a part of each innovation project for new product development. In view of this fact, respondents were asked to explain why the question of respecting ergonomic criteria is so often underestimated or even ignored during the product design phase. The paper also reflects the most important standards, norms and government regulations in the field of ergonomics that are valid in all the European Union countries.