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Human factors in manufacturing
Books Human factors in manufacturing T. Lupton fEd) Proceedings of the 1st International Conference 3 - 5 April 1984, London. IFS Publications Ltd/North Holland, pp 359.
Human Factors in Manufacturing is the report, edited by Prof T. Lupton, of a conference held in London in April 1984. Some 35 papers were presented, covering primarily the areas of work organisation, industrial relations and quality of working life issues; only two or three considered more classical ergonomics matters. As with any conference report, the level of papers varied. The aim appears to have been to inform an industrial audience, hence many papers provided straightforward reviews which did not necessarily discuss current research matters. Selected readings from these Proceedings should be of value to industrial people to understand some of the wide ranging work now going on into the creation of better working situations as a result of new technologies in manufacture. There are many case studies, from continental Europe, including Scandinavia, as well as Britain, and these illustrate such problems as introducing new technologies, integrating robots and people, designing jobs within highly automated plants, skill changes with CAD, and other aspects of computer aided manufacture. Students, and those lecturers teaching general industrial ergonomics, will also find it a useful source of general information on some of the many areas of activity where ergonomics impinges on the industrial world. The specialist may well f'md the approach too general, with the few research papers requiring digging out from the rest.
of these meetings was to bring together interested parties with a wide range of viewpoints and experience in order to identify future policy. The contributions are divided into three sections which correspond to the three one-day meetings. The first of these covers the evidence that VDU users are exposed to a health risk. The second section covers the more indirect consequences of VDUs, while the final section introduces ways in which VDU tasks can be improved by considering not only hardware factorsbut also the more complex problems of job design. Unfortunately, the result is an aimless collection of contributions ranging from general discussions, anecdotal reports based on samples of a few subjects, and vague review articles to more specific project reports. I found the specific reports, such as the one by Hunting and his colleagues on postural loads, the more satisfactory. But even in the case o f this contribution, I fail to see why the same figure (p 123) was presented on another page (p 65) by one of the co-authorsin a summary section. It is possibly unfair to be over-critical of this collection of articles, bearing in mindit is already welt out of date. Hopefully, it is meetings of the kind reported in this book which will have encouraged ergonomists and others to adopt a more comprehendve and thorough approach to investigating VDT work and improving the quality of working life.
Reference Natiomd Academy of Sciences 1983 Video displays, work and vision. Washington: National Academy Press.
Ted Megaw
E.N. Corlett The psychology of human-computer interaction Health hazards of VDTs? B. Pearce (Ed) John Wiley, Chichester, pp 244 + ix. £16.50 (hardback).
I have often been puzzled by the apparent obsessive concern of ergononmts for the possible health hazards to VDT workers. Clearly there are many other groups, such as agricultural workers and miners, who are at a greater demonstrable risk and yet they do not attract such attention. Whatever the reason, this new publication only goes to show the extent to which ergonomists are unable to answer satisfactorily a whole range of questions concerning VDT work. Indeed, the book can be regarded as a public apology on behalf of ergonomics. Whether this reflects a lack of effort and commitment or, more seriously, the absence of a suitable methodology to study the problems, is debatable. On the more encouraging side, the situation is not quite so depressing as this book suggests. For example, an excellent review of some of the health hazards is given in the National Academy Press publication entitled Video Displays, Work and Vision (1983). The main reason for the failure of this new publication is the unsuccessful attempt to transcribe into a comprehensive text the contents of three one-day meetings held in Loughborough between 1980 and 1981. The admirable aim
302
Applied Ergonomics
December 1984
S.K. Card, T.P. Moran and A. Newel/ Lawrence Ertbaum Associates, London, pp 469 + xiii, £27.50 (hardback) Interactive computer systemsshould be designed to be "efficient, easy to use, error free - even enjoyable" (editors). One of the major difficulties in achieving such objectives, however, is being able to match the scientific knowledge of human bchaviour to appropriate design principles. The aim of Card, Moran and Newell is to tac4de this problem by describing a psychological theory o f ~ e d human-computer interaction and showing how this can be simplified into practical engineering models for use as toob for dedgners.
In the first section of the book a specific model of information-processing is presented in terms of human performance which is relevant t o hum~-computer interaction. Basically the Model Human Processor, as it is called, is divided into three interacting subsystems - the perceptual system, the motor system andthe cognitive system - all of which are described in terms of their own set of memories and processors together with a set of operation principles. The model is supposedly a synthesis of the current state of psychological knowledge but leans somewhat heavily on the dominant 1970s 'box' notion of information processing in an attempt to keep it simple and precise.
Human Factors in Manufacturing is the report, edited by Prof T. Lupton, of a conference held in London in April 1984. Some 35 papers were presented, covering primarily the areas of work organisation, industrial relations and quality of working life issues; only two or three considered more classical ergonomics matters. As with any conference report, the level of papers varied. The aim appears to have been to inform an industrial audience, hence many papers provided straightforward reviews which did not necessarily discuss current research matters. Selected readings from these Proceedings should be of value to industrial people to understand some of the wide ranging work now going on into the creation of better working situations as a result of new technologies in manufacture. There are many case studies, from continental Europe, including Scandinavia, as well as Britain, and these illustrate such problems as introducing new technologies, integrating robots and people, designing jobs within highly automated plants, skill changes with CAD, and other aspects of computer aided manufacture. Students, and those lecturers teaching general industrial ergonomics, will also find it a useful source of general information on some of the many areas of activity where ergonomics impinges on the industrial world. The specialist may well f'md the approach too general, with the few research papers requiring digging out from the rest.
of these meetings was to bring together interested parties with a wide range of viewpoints and experience in order to identify future policy. The contributions are divided into three sections which correspond to the three one-day meetings. The first of these covers the evidence that VDU users are exposed to a health risk. The second section covers the more indirect consequences of VDUs, while the final section introduces ways in which VDU tasks can be improved by considering not only hardware factorsbut also the more complex problems of job design. Unfortunately, the result is an aimless collection of contributions ranging from general discussions, anecdotal reports based on samples of a few subjects, and vague review articles to more specific project reports. I found the specific reports, such as the one by Hunting and his colleagues on postural loads, the more satisfactory. But even in the case o f this contribution, I fail to see why the same figure (p 123) was presented on another page (p 65) by one of the co-authorsin a summary section. It is possibly unfair to be over-critical of this collection of articles, bearing in mindit is already welt out of date. Hopefully, it is meetings of the kind reported in this book which will have encouraged ergonomists and others to adopt a more comprehendve and thorough approach to investigating VDT work and improving the quality of working life.
Reference Natiomd Academy of Sciences 1983 Video displays, work and vision. Washington: National Academy Press.
Ted Megaw
E.N. Corlett The psychology of human-computer interaction Health hazards of VDTs? B. Pearce (Ed) John Wiley, Chichester, pp 244 + ix. £16.50 (hardback).
I have often been puzzled by the apparent obsessive concern of ergononmts for the possible health hazards to VDT workers. Clearly there are many other groups, such as agricultural workers and miners, who are at a greater demonstrable risk and yet they do not attract such attention. Whatever the reason, this new publication only goes to show the extent to which ergonomists are unable to answer satisfactorily a whole range of questions concerning VDT work. Indeed, the book can be regarded as a public apology on behalf of ergonomics. Whether this reflects a lack of effort and commitment or, more seriously, the absence of a suitable methodology to study the problems, is debatable. On the more encouraging side, the situation is not quite so depressing as this book suggests. For example, an excellent review of some of the health hazards is given in the National Academy Press publication entitled Video Displays, Work and Vision (1983). The main reason for the failure of this new publication is the unsuccessful attempt to transcribe into a comprehensive text the contents of three one-day meetings held in Loughborough between 1980 and 1981. The admirable aim
302
Applied Ergonomics
December 1984
S.K. Card, T.P. Moran and A. Newel/ Lawrence Ertbaum Associates, London, pp 469 + xiii, £27.50 (hardback) Interactive computer systemsshould be designed to be "efficient, easy to use, error free - even enjoyable" (editors). One of the major difficulties in achieving such objectives, however, is being able to match the scientific knowledge of human bchaviour to appropriate design principles. The aim of Card, Moran and Newell is to tac4de this problem by describing a psychological theory o f ~ e d human-computer interaction and showing how this can be simplified into practical engineering models for use as toob for dedgners.
In the first section of the book a specific model of information-processing is presented in terms of human performance which is relevant t o hum~-computer interaction. Basically the Model Human Processor, as it is called, is divided into three interacting subsystems - the perceptual system, the motor system andthe cognitive system - all of which are described in terms of their own set of memories and processors together with a set of operation principles. The model is supposedly a synthesis of the current state of psychological knowledge but leans somewhat heavily on the dominant 1970s 'box' notion of information processing in an attempt to keep it simple and precise.