Edition No. 14

Zavitz on Ergo:

How Ergonomics Affects the Bottom Line

by Ben Zavitz, CPE

About Zavitz on Ergo

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In today’s business environment, companies are focused on producing more with less, while trying to maintain or increase shareholder value. Ask any operations manager what they are accountable for and you will hear terms like on time delivery, no defects, cycle time reductions, reduced scraps, and improved profit margins. Ergonomics is not even in their vocabulary. For many managers, injuries and employee safety are simply a cost of doing business--something over which they have little or no control. What happens when there are no injuries? How many times have you heard a manager say, “We do not need an ergonomics program because we have no injuries (or very few)?” With the constant focus on increasing profits and reducing costs, the value of a sustainable ergonomics program needs to be demonstrated in a language that management understands – MONEY.

The New Profit Equation

The best way to demonstrate the value of ergonomics is to integrate it into high level company initiatives. Two of the most common corporate initiatives designed to improve business performance and efficiency are Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma. Upper level management recognizes the value of these initiatives and gives them the high level attention, commitment, resources, and budgets to succeed. The traditional view of business is the Principle Cost Plus Model, which states that the sales price is equal to the cost (to make or produce a product or service) plus the profit margin.

Sales Price = Cost + Profit

With global manufacturing and increased competition, companies have been forced to rethink their current strategy to remain competitive. This leads to a new business model of Principle Cost Reduction, which states that profit is equal to the sales price minus the costs to produce the product.

Profit = Sales Price – Cost

This new profit equation, which forces corporations to explore different ways to reduce costs, is where Lean and Six Sigma come into play. The basic philosophy of Lean is that costs can always be reduced when wastes (i.e., non-valued activities) are eliminated through process and operational improvements. There are eight different types of wastes that can be eliminated (i.e., overproduction, inventory, waiting time, transportation, processing, motion and movement, product defects, and underutilized employees). By using Lean and Six Sigma tools, techniques, and methods, companies are able to improve business performance and increase profits by eliminating wastes and identifying specific out of tolerance situations in processes and operations.

Measuring Human Performance – Defining Risky Motions

The major elements missing from Lean and Six Sigma systems are the methods and tools to identify human performance. Lean and Six Sigma are mainly concerned with external productivity (i.e., better, faster, and cheaper products). What about the internal productivity of the employee? Internal productivity is concerned with the ability of the individual to produce more output with no increase in muscle activity, heart rate, or risk of injury, or the ability to produce the same amount of output with less muscle activity, heart rate, or risk of injury. Designing work that ignores human limitations increases costs by creating unwanted or needless motion (that increases cycle time) and thus is wasteful. Injuries related to poor ergonomic design increase costs and therefore need to be reduced.

Waste of movement not only impacts internal productivity; it can significantly impact external productivity and efficiency. Through the integration of ergonomics into a Lean system, we have been able to reduce client cycle times and improve efficiency by as much as 50 percent. Even with leaned out work cells, we have been able to achieve an additional 25 percent reduction in cycle time by addressing internal productivity issues that are often ignored during Lean events.

Ergonomic Tools and Methodology

For Lean/Six Sigma champions to embrace and integrate ergonomics, robust tools and methods that can define and measure internal productivity and cost justification improvements are required. EORM has several Lean/Ergonomics tools available that help accomplish this.

To define risky or unnecessary movements (i.e., awkward postures, forceful exertions and unnecessary exertions) the START (System To Assign Risk Thresholds) and STEER (System To Evaluate Ergonomic Risk) methodologies can be used. Both consistently evaluate the presence or absence of risky motions and predict the impact of improvements on those risky motions (see my article Injury Prevention Through Ergonomic Risk Assessment for more details). These tools are necessary due to the lack of a universal taxonomy of defined overburden (internal productivity) and acceptable risk. This leads to confusion on what is an acceptable design or work practice.

In a recent training class, one of the engineers said, “What I learned in school was that if the worker can reach an object, it is good ergonomically.” The problem with this statement is what does reach mean? Does it mean reach overhead, reach at arms length, or reach while bending your back over 90 degrees. As you can see, a vague definition like this leads to the complexity of the problem and, the need for a systematic and consistent approach of defining risk and internal productivity. During a recent Six Sigma/Ergonomic project I worked on, the Black Belt said that the STEER “defines the undefinable.” In my opinion, this statement clearly shows that many of today’s ergonomic assessment tools fall short, making it difficult for ergonomics to survive in the new manufacturing era.

Comments by Dr. Shigeo Shingo (a Lean Guru) also illustrate this point. He stated, "Unfortunately, real waste lurks in forms that do not look like waste. Only through careful observation and goal orientation can waste be identified. We must always keep in mind that the greatest waste is the waste we don't see."
The goal of today’s ergonomics tool should be to help Lean teams find the potential "waste we don't see.”

Measuring Human Performance – Cost Justifying

Once risky or non-value added motions are defined and potential solutions are developed, we need to determine the impact of the solutions on cycle time and efficiency. To achieve this, we have developed a tool called PASS (Productivity Assessment Simplification Sequence). By integrating ergonomic research with industrial engineering methods measurement techniques, we were able to develop a sophisticated and efficient method that accurately assesses the impact that a single solution or group of solutions will have on a task specific time or overall cycle time without the need for physical mock-ups or equipment purchases.

For example, on one job we redesigned the workstation to reduce a 46-inch reach behind the body, placed all parts and accessories within 9-inches by using gravity dispensing units, and used diverters on conveyors to bring products within 9-inches of the employee. Using the PASS system we were able to predict that these simple, yet highly effective improvements would result in a 35 percent reduction in cycle time by eliminating the non-value added risky motions and reducing the strain on the muscles. This redesign also reduced the workstation space and resulted in a 64 percent reduction in overall ergonomic risk. Since we were able to predict the impact and align the projected results with the Lean team’s performance goals, the solution was signed off by the team, the Industrial Engineering Manager, and the Plant Manager. The team was so proud that during a visit from the senior. vice president of Operations, they specifically displayed this new workstation of the future to demonstrate the results that integrating ergonomics and Lean together can have. Needless to say, the senior VP was very impressed.

The PASS tool can also be used on new designs. Using another project as an example, we were asked to evaluate a new packaging workstation at a distribution center. Using human modeling software to re-create the proposed design in the computer, we were able to define and evaluate risky motions for the smallest, average, and largest employees using the STEER methodology. To justify the proposed improvements, we applied the PASS methodology to a series of recommendations. The result was a potential time savings of 449 hours per year across six workstations. This realized an efficiency gain of 30,000 more packages being handled per year without an increase in headcount or additional demands on the employee. More importantly, this was determined before the first workstation was ordered.

How to Keep Jobs in America

As you can see from the two examples above, addressing internal productivity and integrating it with external productivity initiatives can result in significant improvements that affect the bottom line. In order to keep jobs in America, corporations need to address both external and internal productivity. Making jobs easier to perform without overburdening employees will result in improved safety, productivity, quality, and profits. All of which are goals of the Lean system.

People are the most important commodity of any business. Designing work based on human capabilities is a must if companies are to survive in today’s business climate.

If you are interested in receiving a FREE copy of the START evaluation, please email me at zavitzb@eorm.com.

Do you have an ergonomic story you would like to share? Please contact me at zavitzb@eorm.com.

Ergonomically Yours,

Ben Zavitz, CPE
EORM, Inc.
tel: 781.938.9152 ext 106