Recently a picture was in the newspaper about Ford’s Ergonomics Lab with the caption line since 2003, Ford has reduced the injured rate for its more than 50,000 US assembly line workers by 70% through ergonomics technology. This statistic screams to me about declining insurance and hospital costs paid by Ford Motor. There are a number of You Tube videos of how they do what they are doing, needless to say it is very good they are doing it. An assembly line means vehicles come down the line and parts are added to it; in the world of design the heights would have been set to an average person – but if you look at who the company hired, most of them are not average. For example, someone is a little shorter and standing on their toes to do the job, causes back strain which is an extremely hard thing to prove and get over. Standing on a raise platform solves the problem. In the Ergonomics Lab the lab can go through the motions and see the stresses on the joints and pressure points and design the line to significantly reduce the stresses. The healthier the people are, the less the insurance costs and the company can use the people it spent time and effort to hire in the first place.

There are many ways to save costs, one method is to force it onto the employees or the government, which means the company does not pay for costs,  but the problem is not solved. The Ergonomics Lab helps save cost which is why you might ask the larger companies if they have the capabilities or have used the lessons to design to save money – both insurance and human costs. From my perspective this is something all companies should be using for their employees because great design saves money, bad design costs money.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.