Standards in the area of ergonomics enable the design of products and workplaces to give better consideration to the health and safety of their users. If engineers and designers are to apply standards in this area on a greater scale than they have done in the past, their training must provide them with adequate information on the existence and content of these standards.
As early as 2006, KAN began consulting with university teaching staff on design courses, establishing that the aspect of ergonomics was being addressed only tangentially during the training of engineers and particularly of designers. KAN therefore took the decision to launch a project in which lecture modules would be developed by experts in ergonomics and design theory.
Seven ergonomics lecture modules created in the project have been available online for download free of charge since 2008. Since the content of the modules, particularly in the area of ergonomics standardization, gradually becomes outdated, they are updated regularly. Two further modules were added during the 2015 update of the german version: Module 0 for beginners, and Module 6, an introduction to process ergonomics. This revised version aims to communicate the importance of ergonomics to further affected groups. The ergonomics lecture modules have now been published under the "KAN Praxis" brand.
The aim of the project is to provide lecture and further training modules containing information on ergonomics and ergonomics standardization. The tuition materials are intended to enable lecturers, students and other interested parties to acquire the knowledge needed to observe ergonomic principles during the design of products and workplaces.
The modules describe solutions to problems which may arise when ergonomic aspects are ignored during the design process. The content has been prepared such that the benefits of implementing ergonomic findings are evident to the user.
The specialist ergonomics expertise has been compiled in the modules together with examples of good practice in a way that facilitates tuition. The modules can be used either as a complete package or individually. The complete modules including supplementary material correspond to approximately seven double lecture hours.
Solved test questions and exercises are also available for lecturers.