Industrial Engineering Research Paper Summary Project - Section B - 2012

         NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING

                                         PGDIE-42

                                               

                                             

                                                                                                             

          INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING CONCEPTS ASSIGNMENT

 

                                                    

                      Title: The Future of Ergonomic Office Seating

                                   Authors: Dr. Tim Springer

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Introduction

The main focus of this paper is to focused on some aspect of humans as they sit and the objects on which they sit.

In part, because there is a Zen-like duality to sitting and seating— simplicity and complexity; moving and staying; comfort and discomfort. Also, effective sitting and seating relate directly to the activities in which a person engages.

This research paper addresses five related issues:

1. The importance of ergonomic seating

2.  How do we sit?

3. What research tells us about sitting

4. What a chair should do

The future of ergonomic office seating

1. The Importance of Ergonomic Seating

Sitting versus seating – What’s the difference?

Sitting is an activity – Sitting is active, involving motion, balance, position, posture, and control. Sitting is an innate behavior involving both body and mind. Sitting is natural. Sitting is simple.

Seating is a category of devices – People use seats to support themselves when they sit. Seating includes anything people sit on or in. The most common form of seating is a chair. But seating can also include benches, stools, swings, pillows, balls, baskets and such(Lueder&Noro,1994).

2. How Do We Sit?

People sit in thousands of different positions. Casual observation of people at work shows a wide variety

of postures and positions. We sit upright and erect, we slouch, we sit on our feet, we cross our

legs, we straddle chairs, we sit sideways, we balance on the front edge, we tip back on the back legs. We

literally sit almost any way you can imagine. This natural tendency has been called “free posturing”

3. What Research Tells Us about Sitting A review of research literature illustrates five main characteristics common to most studies of sitting and seating: Ergonomic research on seating focuses mainly on the biomechanics of sitting – that is, it measures the position and relationship of the spine and pelvis, muscle contractions, pressure distributions, etc. This is an important beginning to understanding sitting and seating, but, as noted above, sitting is a dynamic activity. Many studies concentrate on so-called “risk factors” – These are conditions and actions that increase the probability of pain, discomfort and injury due to constrained postures associated with sitting for a long time while performing tasks. The constructs of comfort and discomfort are not well understood – Many studies presume comfort is the lack of discomfort. But recent evidence suggests comfort and discomfort are distinctly different but complementary constructs. 5.   What a Chair Should Do Training materials and seating design still reflect the belief that ergonomic seating need support a limited few postures. While desk–bound tasks remain the major part of most office jobs, limiting seating design to one or two positions such as an erect computing posture and a talking–on–the–phone, reclining posture discounts the wide variety of positions people assume when engaged in computing and conversing on the phone. ·         Support a person’s body ·         Support activity ·         Promote movement ·         Be easy to use 6.   The Future of Ergonomic Office Seating Design is the process of exploring various creative solutions to a particular issue or question. It doesn’t assume there is only one correct answer or solution, but is based on the idea of creative exploration yielding many alternatives. When considering the future of ergonomic seating, the way in which designers solve the problems and address the criteria will be many and varied

6. Conclusion The way in which designers and engineers interpret seating requirements will provide a rich array of products and alternatives. But at a minimum, the next generation office chair will fit your body, not just the dimensional criteria of some published standard. It will be stable, yet promote dynamic, active, natural motion allowing sitting in any position. The chair will support you in all the various activities comprising your work day: from sitting at a computer to talking on the phone to interacting with others; from turning or reaching to bending or stretching. The chair supports you in whatever position you feel most comfortable. The chair will support both the physical and cognitive nature of your work enabling you to be more efficient and effective. It will be simple, natural and easy, intuitive and enjoyable to use. To accomplish all these goals, the chair will use new materials and technologies in new ways to provide unique and effective forms and functions. These materials and the processes used to produce the chair will be environmentally intelligent and do no harm to either users or the environment. In short, the future chair will be wonderfully sophisticated, elegant, comfortable, inviting and remarkably simple and natural to use.