Development of an ergonomic evaluation tool for health-promoting physical workplaces

There is evidence that modern sedentary lifestyle is a risk factor for health, while ergonomics tends to overprotect the work force by limiting physical activity during working hours. The paper reports on the development of an Ergonomics assessment tool for simulation and field analysis. It follows a bandwidth approach targeting a balanced physical workload and is based on a review on existing evaluation methods for physical aspects of work routines and on health promotion. A workload and health-monitoring cockpit with live display and replay functionalities was developed as well as an aggregation and summary report for the comparison of variants of working sequences. First tests of the prototype showed that the implementation of the bandwidth model supports a health promotion paradigm in ergonomic workplace design. It is concluded that more research is needed to adjust and balance recommendations of physical activities and upper workload thresholds.