Analysis of industrial expectations for the integration of human factors from the early design phase

Abstract

To understand how industrial designers take into account the information and conditions of use especially the Human Factors and Ergonomics (HFE) from the early design phase, we surveyed more than 50 companies. We analyzed their design work and evaluated if they need a new structured method to provide a real image to understand what is going on in the companies, what they do, use, and how they answer this problem. Also, we proposed to them the method developed by [1], [2], that aims to integrate the human factors and ergonomics (HFE) from the early design phase, and represented in the survey. The objective is, first, to verify the availability of designers to use a new method to help them integrate HFE into their design process and, second, to improve the presented method based on the integration of Lean principles into the design process. The survey has been answered by more than 50 experts in engineering design, which represented companies in France, Germany, and internationally in different sectors of activity such as machinery and equipment, industrial materials, automotive equipment, and products, in which we found quite a few cases of interactions between humans and machines.