ErgoBlog - Ergonomics Thoughts by Auburn Engineers
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May 28
Cost related to ergonomics has been a frequent conversation over the last few weeks. With these economic conditions it is very understandable why that is. I have heard cost discussed in 3 different ways; how do you control costs, what if you can’t find any costs to control and how do you measure gains. All are interesting topics and I will try to touch on each over the next few blogs.
Most of us start ergonomics programs aiming to control costs – generally injury costs. When we are successful, we are left with a dilemma. There are no more injury costs left to justify our existence. Have we truly worked ourselves out of a job! At that time we often start to search for indirect cost savings, savings related to injuries but not directly due to the injury – costs like absenteeism, hiring and training and what not. (As an aside, I don’t care much for the term indirect costs – they are what they are – costs. But more on that later.)
There is a much bigger question tied into this, what does it cost to maintain a low injury rate. Perhaps that is the question with which management is truly struggling. We fundamentally believe it should cost less to maintain a system than to purchase it or bring it under control. Think about this in your own life, with your house or your education – buying or renovating / upgrading should cost more than normal day-to-day living if things are under control. So how do you justify to management what it should cost to maintain ergonomics in your company or facility? Why should they continue to pay you at the same rate if the injury rate is down? Let me know your thoughts….
PS - I haven’t forgotten about risk and cost – I am getting there.
Stephen
May 15
Thanks for the feedback and comments on the last blog. As I suspected, there are a multitude of great ideas and approaches out there. Many folks described how they interact with management and find themselves translating science to communicate with others in the workplace. Many folks appear to be confronted by the management dilemmas – and some keen observations made. I will get into many of these …..
How to provide management with a documented process they can assess and rationally set budgets for was often described in emails to me. A colleague from HP described the difficulties marrying subjective data that workers describe - such as comfort or morale information - with the hard financial data required by management. This challenge of comparing ‘soft qualitative data’ with ‘hard financial numbers’ is common.
One of the few accounting models that marries ‘soft data’ with ‘hard numbers’ is a ‘Balanced Scorecard’. Companies that use a Balanced Scorecard have placed company-specific values on human resource issues. I have seen several variations of Balanced Scorecards, but only a few that included ergonomics.
Whether your company uses a Balanced Scorecard or not, you can turn soft ergonomic data into hard numbers. We have been exploring the idea of risk quantification – and this implies holistic and consistent quantification - for many years. It also implies that you measure risk. You may measure risk in concert with other ‘soft’ measures such as comfort, fatigue or morale, but you need to measure and quantify risk. Quantifying risk to manage risk is one of the common traits of world-class ergonomics systems.
Next time I am going to explore how risk quantification and budgets can be linked, but until then please keep your thoughts coming – they are inspirational.
Stephen
7 May 08
We have the luxurious opportunity to discuss many issues with folks who have deep insights into ergonomics. Most days, someone in some corner of the world poses a question or raises an issue that gives us pause to think. These conversations are what make our job interesting and exciting. Issues ranging from risk to injury and from managed systems to training teams are discussed in our office, over the phone and through the internet.
Rather than repeating these questions and discussions over and over, I am going to raise them through this blog. This will allow you to weigh in with your thoughts on these issues and raise the bar on the discussion so to speak.
Lately we have had frequent discussions on managing ergonomics – and what that means. And believe me, it seems to have far ranging meanings. One thing does appear clear, that we in the ergonomics profession have matured from trying to do laboratory-like research in the workplace to being expected to consistently produce results in a predictable fashion. For us practitioners with roots in science and research this can create a dilemma. How do we overcome this tension between science and business. It seems that one requirement is a repeatable process that provides consistent data across a wide variety of situations. In other words, it seems like we need convergence in the way we do things so it can be explained in the same way over and over again to different people. Unfortunately very few folks can claim to do this. Or at least I haven’t talked to many. This may why Eastman Kodak was so impressive. They had a consistent methodology and process for ergonomics. The voluminous and ahead-of-their-time books spoke to this detailed process. However, it would be interesting to know if such an approach would stand up in today’s need for continuous improvement and ever-shorter improvement and change cycles.
I could continue on this theme for a long time. I will stop for today. Next blog I will continue on this theme of the business of ergonomics – unless someone raises a more exciting discussion over the next few days.
Please chime in. Contact me and add your thoughts.
I’ll be back soon.
Stephen
