Author(s): Roli Dave and Vivek Khanzode
Bartlett (1962) emphasized the primary aim of ergonomics to keep closely connect between technology advancements in worksystem and human efficiency and health. Worksystem creates and delivers value using interactions among its components viz. Human, Machine, Environment, Workspace and Work organization. Human is regarded as the fundamental value adder in a worksystem as the human interacts with every other component of the worksystem. Such worksystems may be termed as human-centric worksystems. Worksystem failures, which are out-comes of negative system-person interactions, such as accident, traumatic injuries, work-related musculoskeletal disorders, and occupational illness directly, affect human efficiency and health, leading to productivity losses. The purpose of this study is to assess human-centric Interactions in technology advancing heavy engineering sectors such as Railways, Aviation, Automobile, Construction Mining, and Shipping. In this work, we use Leamon model (1980) as the fundamen-tal worksystem model and map the interactions to summarize the focus of recent ergonomic stud-ies in the context of technology advancements. Our analysis indicates that the contemporary er-gonomics research in heavy industries is more focused on interactions such as human and work-space (classical work study), human and work environment (environmental norms and standards), human and work organization (behavioral safety, human factors, and macroergonomics). However, the evolving interactions between human and machine components due to the changing nature of worksystem (including advances in automation) are scarcely researched. Future ergonomic studies need to focus on human-machine interactions towards effective worksystem design.