Science Of Work - Modern Office Furniture


Overview:

For decades, the commercial furniture industry has invested millions of dollars, and enormous amounts of managerial time and manpower to make the poignant shift from being plain hardware providers to becoming solution-based organizations who cohort with their customers to develop next generation modern office furniture that realizes their customers needs. The word "ergonomics" originates from the Greek word ergo (meaning work) and nomos (meaning law), literally meaning 'law of work.'

Ergonomics (also referred to as Human Factors or Human Engineering in the United States) is the study of the interaction between people and machines/tools and factors that affect the productivity. Its purpose is to improve the efficiency by improving the human machine interaction. This is usually accomplished by designing-in an enhanced interface or by designing-out negative factors in the work environment that degrade human machine performance.

Maintaining proper office equipment supplies enhances the level of productivity. The celebrant of efficiency was the late Frederick Winslow Taylor, whose time-and-motion studies modernized the industrial workplace and whose writings such as "The Principles of Scientific Management," became the Holy Grail among industrial engineers and factory managers. Taylor who was obsessed with order and efficiency entered the iron and steel industry in the 1870s.

Taylor's calibrating vision saw only mayhem on shop floors. In his stint at the Bethlehem Steel Company in 1898, Taylor designed fifteen kinds of shovels, each for a specific task and allocated each worker a coal shovel ideally suited to the worker's own body structure, significantly improving their productivity. He was able to prove that 140 skilled workers could do the work of six hundred men. Bethlehem Steel Company thereupon discharged the "excess" workforce, thus cutting its coal-shoveling costs by half. It also gave the remaining workers a raise and further incentives for exceeding production goals.

Summary:

The implementation of ergonomics in modern office furniture and organizational setup makes the employees perform better by purging undesirable aspects, such as inefficiency, fatigue, work-related injuries and low morale. Ergonomics also makes simple and day-to-day items such as paper shredders, wrist pads for the keyboarder, or telephones user-friendly and easy to use. Office ergonomics encompasses the design of whole workspaces and of its components such as desktops, tables or chairs. The ergonomist, a person trained to assess work activities and equipment, creates an ambience in the office so that it enhances the workers well being, makes work easier to accomplish and allows the workers to perform proficiently.