Manual materials handling implications of global changes in work

The world of work is changing, driven partly by such forces as globalization, changed workforce demographics, increased work intensity and pervasive computing. These changes in turn have implications for manual materials handling systems and how they will affect the workforce in the future. This paper argues that most of the changes imply more diversity of both jobs and of those performing the jobs. Increased diversity means that task demands are more likely to exceed human capabilities, so that ergonomics will be needed more in the future. Strategies for responding to the changes at the levels of the profession and the enterprise ergonomics function are presented.