Global quality: linking ergonomics and production

The globalization of commerce has combined with the new dominance of custom er demands and the need for shareholder value to force the pace of change i n manufacturing and service industries. Production now entails fitting of a productive process to the needs of remote customers and demanding sharehol ders, while ensuring the correct mix of human and technology in the product ion process. Production now encompasses service industries, which provide t he majority of employment in the industrialized countries. The human in the production process implies ergonomics. Pressures from globalization, custo mer and shareholder appear to be in conflict but, in fact, all are demandin g a combination of function, reliability, price and productivity. The combi nation desired might change between stakeholders, but the overriding metric is quality. Quality is a function of technological and human factors, and is greatly influenced by ergonomics in its broadest sense. Errors in the pr ocess can arise from many human/system interactions and result in product u nreliability, poor productivity or even injury to the workforce or product user. This paper shows examples of quality as the system goal that can driv e systems to meet the global demands, and of how quality and ergonomics are intimately related in production systems.