Essay Example on Ergonomics: Applied Science for Safe & Efficient Human Interaction

Introduction

Ergonomics is the applied science that deals with the design and arrangement of things or processes that people interact with. This applied science aims to make sure these things or processes are designed and arranged well for safe and efficient interaction and usage. Ergonomics and human factors are closely related as they all seek to address the factors or issues that may affect the interaction of human beings with different things (like machines and equipment) or processes in workplaces or other places where human beings interact with different things or processes. Industries should always be careful on the issues of ergonomics and human factors to make sure their workers are safe and interact safely and productively with the things (products) and processes (services) in their enterprises. The aviation and aerospace industry is one of the highly sensitive industries where designers and engineers working in the industry need to be very keen on issues of ergonomics and human factors to make sure all the products and services that interact with human beings in this industry are safe and efficient and pose very few or no risks to human beings. This paper aims to explore the aspects or ergonomics and human factors issues in the aviation industry, which will help to show how the people in the industry can work in the industry safely and productively.

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Issues in engineering and design problems exist today

The issue of the quality of raw materials and other products used in the industry. Currently, there are many organizations that manufacture substandard or low-quality products, and some of these products are bought to be used in the aviation industry in the design or manufacturing of different machines used in the industry. This compromises the quality of these machines and increases their chances of failing or malfunctioning, where the pause a threat to human safety.

The issue of high costs of raw materials and other products used in the aviation industry, which compel the people working in the industry to go for cheap materials whose durability and quality quite low.

The issue of some incompetent designers and engineers working in the aviation industry. There are some cases where problems have been experienced in the aviation industry due to incompetence of some designers or engineers working in the industry. These designers or engineers design and manufacture machines which easily fail or malfunction when being operated, which is a great threat to human safety.

The issues of negligence or genuine human errors which lead to wrong designs. There are some problems that have been reported in the designs or products manufactured in the aviation industry due to negligence or genuine human errors that can hardly be avoided.

"Systems thinking, design thinking, humanistic thinking, and scientific thinking"

Systems thinking is a holistic approach that seeks to explore how different systems and their constituents interrelate and work to achieve their primary role (the role that they were designed to perform)

Design thinking is an iterative approach that seeks to utilize the available knowledge, ideas, skills, and experience to design or create a solution to solve an existing problem. This kind of thinking is normally considered as a strategy of innovation and problem-solving.

Humanistic thinking is the kind of thinking that entails the use of social, emotional, and cognitive knowledge and skills to improve human wellbeing and systems' performance when there are some systems being considered.

Lastly, scientific thinking is the thinking that entails gathering the existing evidence and using the gathered evidence to solve some problems or make some critical decisions.

"Systems thinking, design thinking, humanistic thinking, and scientific thinking" can be used to improve human performance and aviation safety in that people working in the aviation industry should be encouraged to always think accordingly, depending on the situations at hand for them to address the situations productively, safely, and in ways that have a positive impact on the performance of the industry.

Automation and its impact on human performance

Automation can be described as the use of automatic machines, equipment, or systems in manufacturing and production processes (Billings, 2018). Automation has many impacts on human performance, one of the main impacts being leading to the reduction of human beings or employees working in industries, as most of the duties/roles that were meant to be done by human beings are now taken by automatic machines, equipment, or systems.

New technology being used in design efficiency and human performance in all aspects of the aviation industry

Artificial intelligence technology can be identified as the new technology being used in design efficiency and human performance in all aspects of the aviation industry (Shmelova, Sterenharz, & Dolgikh, 2020). This artificial intelligence technology has enabled the designers working in the aviation industry to design intelligent and automatic machines whose efficiency, accuracy and speed are very high, which improves the performance of the industry significantly. The good thing is that these machines can also blend or work fairly well with human beings boosting the performance of industry tremendously.

References

Billings, C. E. (2018). Aviation automation: The search for a human-centered approach. CRC Press.

Shmelova, T., Sterenharz, A., & Dolgikh, S. (2020). Artificial Intelligence in Aviation Industries: Methodologies, Education, Applications, and Opportunities. In Handbook of Research on Artificial Intelligence Applications in the Aviation and Aerospace Industries (pp. 1-35). IGI Global.