Affiliations: University at Buffalo, Department of Industrial Engineering, 438 Bell Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260, USA. Tel.: +1 716 645 2357 x2117; Fax: +1 716 645 3302; E-mail: [email protected] | Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety, 71 Frankland Road, Hopkinton, MA, 01748, USA. Tel.: +1 508 497 0218; Fax: +1 508 435 0482; E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract: The world of work is changing, driven partly by such forces as globalization, changed workforce demographics, increased work intensity and pervasive computing. These changes in turn have implications for manual materials handling systems and how they will affect the workforce in the future. This paper argues that most of the changes imply more diversity of both jobs and of those performing the jobs. Increased diversity means that task demands are more likely to exceed human capabilities, so that ergonomics will be needed more in the future. Strategies for responding to the changes at the levels of the profession and the enterprise ergonomics function are presented.
Keywords: manual materials handling, global changes, diverse workers, increasing workloads, individual capability, matching demands and capabilities
