Structural Model for the Effects of Environmental Elements on the Psychological Characteristics and Performance of the Employees of Manufacturing Systems

Abstract

This paper analyzes the effects of environmental elements on the psychological characteristics and performance of employees in manufacturing systems using structural equation modeling. Increasing the comprehension of these effects may help optimize manufacturing systems regarding their employees’ psychological characteristics and performance from a macroergonomic perspective. As the method, a new macroergonomic compatibility questionnaire (MCQ) was developed and statistically validated, and 158 respondents at four manufacture companies were considered. Noise, lighting and temperature, humidity and air quality (THAQ) were used as independent variables and psychological characteristics and employees’ performance as dependent variables. To propose and test the hypothetical causal model of significant relationships among the variables, a data analysis was deployed. Results found that the macroergonomic compatibility of environmental elements presents significant direct effects on employees’ psychological characteristics and either direct or indirect effects on the employees’ performance. THAQ had the highest direct and total effects on psychological characteristics. Regarding the direct and total effects on employees’ performance, the psychological characteristics presented the highest effects, followed by THAQ conditions. These results may help measure and optimize manufacturing systems’ performance by enhancing their macroergonomic compatibility and quality of life at work of the employees.

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“…Specifically, its importance is ranked the fifth among the seven factors affecting the success ( =0.608) and the sixth among the eight factors affecting the performance ( =0.675). This finding is similar to those by [97,[104][105][106][107][108]. Consequently, creating a friendly working environment and a good culture of quality and continuous improvement is also crucial to be considered by the SMEs in Vietnam.…”

“…Environment. Realyvásquez et al [104] also pointed out that environmental elements such as air quality, humidity, temperature, noise, lighting have significant impacts on workers' psychological characteristics and their performance whereas Day & Randell [97] claimed that a healthy working environment is one of the cores of Kaizen philosophy because it positively results in significant increase in employees' commitment, retention, stakeholders' satisfaction, and firms' financial performance. In addition, working environment strongly affects organizational productivity [105] and employee satisfaction [106][107][108], leading to an increase in overall performance.…”

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“…According to several studies, ergonomic compatibility has a positive impact on manufacturing systems [37]. In other words, the higher the MCI, the better the element, the factor, or the manufacturing system.…”

“…The validation results of the MCQ can be consulted in [33,39], whereas the validation results of the macroergonomic compatibility construct are reported in [37,39]. Similarly, the validity results of the MCI are shown in (iv) Designing a thorough work plan to list the macroergonomic compatibility goals to be reached and the tasks to be completed to reach such goals.…”