The body of ergonomics standards is divided between European standards pursuant to the Machinery Directive, international standards with a closer focus upon principles, including principles for design, ant the ergonomic provisions contained within a wide range of product standards. What has been lacking to date, by which these areas could be merged to form a harmonious whole, is described here by the Chairs of the ergonomics comittees at DIN and ISO, Norbert Breutmann and Georg Krämer.

Our working world would be more humane, employees healthier, and companies more efficient if ergonomic findings were more frequently put into practice. The participants at a workshop held in 2008 dealing with the ergonomics requirements of the new Machinery Directive found the essential difficulty to be not the new requirements themselves, but poor communication between the research community and the field. They therefore decided there and then to address this problem.

In July 2010, KAN held a workshop on the subject of anthropometry in the field and crossing the gap between standards and designers. The workshop was prompted by recommendations made in KAN Report 44 concerning anthropometric data in standardization. The workshop participants discussed the current need for action and drew up a series of recommendations. These were approved by KAN at the end of 2010. The KAN Secretariat will therefore now promote their implementation.

The philosophy of the standards governing mental stress at work has proved effective. Certain changes are planned however for the upcoming revision. DIN’s Ergonomics standards committee launched this review by selecting an instrument not usually employed in standardization: a workshop. In the workshop, numerous explicit proposals were made for further development of the standards. These will be exploited by the committee as a basis for its work.

The European Single Market and with it a substantial part of prevention activity are founded upon suitable procedures for the testing, certification and ongoing monitoring of product conformity. KAN has commissioned a review of whether an essential requirement for this procedure is met: are conformity assessment bodies themselves assessed and accredited against a complete, harmonized and inherently consistent body of standards and regulations?

In March 2010, following a formal objection by the UK authorities, the European Commission deleted EN 353-1 governing guided-type fall arresters from the list of harmonized standards in the Official Journal of the EU. Standards committees and test and certification bodies are working on provisions to solve the ensuing problems for manufacturers, test bodies, users and market surveillance authorities.