From the introduction: This handbook is aimed primarily at front line managers (FLMs) in manufacturing industries. Frontline manager is defined here as the first management level with personnel responsibility. It is the most common managerial position and is found in all companies that have at least one management level. It is an extremely important role. Research also highlights the FLM as a key position in the creation of well-functioning and sustainable production.

You may be new to the role of being a manager, if so this book will help you to understand your tasks. If you are an experienced manager but new to the company, you will find some suggestions on how to succeed in your new job. Finally, we hope that we can offer some pearls of wisdom for those of you who are experienced managers in a company you have known for a long time.

The handbook is also for you who collaborate with FLMs. You may be working in the line or as a team leader, which is a leader without personnel responsibility. You may be a second line manager or have a production support role with responsibility for protection and safety, planning and scheduling, quality development, technical maintenance, technological development, product development, logistics, HR functions or something else. We hope that the handbook will provide you all with useful advice and information.

This handbook is intended to clarify the content of FLM’s work and how it can be developed. We do this by describing the role and work of the FLM but also the ever-present dynamics and problem-solving foundin the role. We also want to underscore opportunities for systematically developing the potential for and ability to work as a FLM. To enable you to work and thrive in the role in the long term or support someone else in this role. FLMs have a major impact on both work environment and efficiency within their area. As such, the manager’s work environment is also of great importance for success.

First-line managers (FLMs) have a vital role in developing stable output and organizational competitiveness through their ability to manage front-line operations in daily work. It is also well known that FLMs are strong determinants of good ergonomics and well-being for front-line staff. However, research focusing on how FLMs deal with their important role is lacking particularly regarding empirical studies. The focus here is how they deal with uncertainties and disruptive interruptions and develop more resilient performance in daily work – introduced in this article as resilient action strategies.

This research uses two conceptual frameworks on resilient engineering for analysis of FLM's actions in daily work in two manufacturing companies, to explore how resilient action strategies can be organizationally supported. The study combines analysis of front-line activities with multilevel organizational support based on 30 semi-structured in-depth interviews with FLMs and support functions, 21 workshops as well as policy documents of the two companies. The analysis exemplifies how resilience engineering was enabled in practice in the organizations.

The study contributes to the empirical understanding of how resilience can be organizationally supported in daily front-line work. Our results show that a developed and consistent infrastructure in companies promotes the emergence of resilient action strategies in front-line work. We propose an extended model for resilient front-line performance enhancement by including coordination as a linking aspect between the earlier suggested resilient potentials – anticipate, monitor, respond and learn. This highlights the importance of both organizational support and coordination between system levels to enable the development of resilient action strategies by FLMs.

Developing new manual computer pointing devices abiding to the requirements set out in ergonomic product design literature necessitates joining contributions from several areas, including the ergonomic guidelines applicable to hand tool design, human–system interaction, and certain user characteristics such as anthropometric data. Computer mice are hand tools enabling the interaction with the computer, for use by people from both sexes and practically all ages. Moreover, the PC mouse’s intensive usage is able to cause musculoskeletal disorders. This paper reports on a study aimed at developing new computer mouse shapes, reducing forearm pronation, and providing hand–palm holding, supported by a literature review and an adequate design methodology, starting from known shapes of commercial products, the traditional (horizontal) computer mouse, and the vertical computer mouse. In this regard, potential concepts were generated as solutions to the previously specified problem through a set of creative tasks based on the specifications. Four new shapes were proposed to be evaluated through an assessment matrix; as a result, two new PC mice geometries were designed and fully prototyped. This study also reports on selected results of usability and an electromyographic evaluation of the prototypes against three commercial PC mice (horizontal, slanted, and vertical) by a sample of 20 participants, supporting validation of the development process and the newly developed geometries, with emphasis on the slanted conical innovative shape. 

Introduction. The study assessed musculoskeletal complaints (MSCs) in administrative workers, associating MSCs with non-paid housework, home use of electronic devices and physical exercise, while keeping a distinctive gender approach. This may promote the development of more effective preventive measures, by meeting the specific strengths and weaknesses of each gender.

Method. 96 administrative workers (58 women and 38 men) who used computers more than 50% of their working time participated in a cross-sectional study. A questionnaire concerning individual socio-demographic data, habits and lifestyle, and including the Nordic Musculoskeletal Questionnaire (NMQ), was deployed. Gender based odd ratios for MSCs in body areas over the previous 12 months and correlation coefficients between habits and lifestyle variables and NMQ variables were computed.

Results. Women did not incur a higher risk of MSC than men. Analysis of association did not yield meaningful associations for either gender. Results suggest giving future consideration to development of a gender specific preventive measures.

Conclusion. Computerized work performed concomitantly with physical exposures outside the workplace, showed mixed associations with MSCs, according to gender and depending on kind of exposure. Results are indicative of the need for development of gender specific preventive measures.

Från inledningen: Den här handboken vänder sig framför allt till dig som är första linjens chef i tillverkande industri. Första linjens chef definieras här som den första chefsnivån som har personalansvar. Det är den vanligaste chefspositionen och finns i alla företag med minst en chefsnivå. Det är en oerhört viktig funktion! Även forskningen lyfter fram första linjens chef som en nyckelposition för att skapa en väl fungerande och hållbar produktion.

Du kanske är helt ny i rollen som chef och då är det här en hjälp till att förstå uppgiften. Eller så är du erfaren chef men ny i företaget, och kan behöva lite tips för att förstå och lyckas i ditt nya jobb. Slutligen hoppas vi erbjuda några guldkorn även för dig som är erfaren chef i ett företag som du känner sedan länge.

Handboken vänder sig också till dig som har en roll i samarbete med första linjens chefer. Du kanske jobbar i linjen eller är teamledare, dvs ledare utan personalansvar. Du kanske är andra linjens chef eller har en stödfunktion till produktionen med ansvar för skydd och säkerhet, planering, kvalitetsutveckling, tekniskt underhåll, teknikutveckling, produktutveckling, logistik eller HR-funktioner. Vi hoppas att ni alla kan hitta användbara råd och lärdomar i handboken.

I handboken vill vi tydliggöra arbetsinnehållet för första linjens chefer och hur det kan utvecklas. Vi gör det genom att beskriva rollen och arbetet som första linjens chef. Vi lägger också stor vikt vid att beskriva dynamiken och problemlösningen som hela tiden är närvarande. Dessutom vill vi peka på möjligheterna att systematiskt utveckla förutsättningarna för och förmågan att arbeta som chef i första linjen – så att du kan fungera och må bra i uppgiften på ett hållbart sätt eller stötta den personsom har denna roll. En första linjens chef har stor inverkan på både arbetsmiljön och effektiviteten inom sitt område. Även chefens arbetsmiljö är därför av stor vikt för att nå bra resultat inom dessa områden.

The aim of this concept article is to articulate multiple contributions from socio-technical fields into an approach for sustaining human-centred lifecycle management of industrial systems. Widespread digitalization and advanced robotics have fostered interest on innovative human-machine integration and sophisticated organizational transformation that is conducive to meeting the challenges of sustainability. Complementing technology-driven and data-driven approaches to industrial systems development, the human factors approach offers a systems perspective that is at once human-centred while striving for overall system performance, by considering technological and organizational perspectives alike. The paper presents a set of recent human factors developments, selected based on their potential to advance sustainability in industrial systems, including an activity-centred design perspective of industrial systems, and a unified and entangled view on organizational goals yielding a dynamic change approach to socio-technical systems management. Moreover, developments in organizational resilience are coupled with recent breakthrough empirical understanding of conditions conducive to attaining resilience in operations. The cross-pollination of the human factors developments is further pursued, resulting in a proposal of combined key organizational vectors that can mutually leverage and sustain human-centred design and management of industrial systems (production and logistics systems alike) for resilience. Systems thinking encompassing human, organizational and technological perspectives supports integration of insights across entangled domains; this can leverage both system enhancements that promote the satisfaction of dynamic situation-dependent goals, as well as the fulfilment of objectives derived from long-term values of an organization.

BACKGROUND: Static muscular activity of muscles activated in the use of the conventional PC mouse is believed to represent a higher risk for the musculoskeletal health of the user than dynamic muscular activity.

OBJECTIVE: This paper presents a compounded muscular activity dynamics indicator (akin to percent relative range), enabling comparison between computer handheld pointing devices.

METHODS: This muscular dynamism approach considers baseline muscular activity (APL, ECR, ECU and ED) relative to the Maximum Voluntary Contraction as well as the dynamics of muscular activation. The latter is computed as the ratio of the difference between APDF90 and APDF10 divided by APDF50 (APDF-Amplitude Probability Distribution Function for the 90th, 50th and 10th percentiles). The paper demonstrates the approach with results of comparative evaluation of a horizontal, a slanted and a vertical PC mouse, through surface EMG monitoring of 20 participants performing standardized graphical task with the devices.

RESULTS: Hand size impacts muscular activity dynamics in these four muscles, which supersedes differences in device geometry, across the range of devices tested.

CONCLUSION: Smaller devices relative to hand size foster more dynamic muscular activity.

The sustainability crisis entails high levels of complexity, not approachable from linear or reductionist stances. Unveiled from a holistic stance as a multilevel phenomenon characterized by qualitative novelty, emergence pertains to complex self-organizing systems. Emergent properties and behaviors arise only when system parts interact in a wider whole. This article positions emergence for enhancing solution processes to meet sustainability challenges. It proposes the systemic approach as a catalyst for emergence of wise creative solutions tackling wicked unsustainability problems. This requires observation and entails analyzing open systems altogether and recognizing the impact of navigating across macro- and micro- scales on causal and creative emergence. Sustainable development requires circumventing past conventional practices, in an accelerated way. The emergence phenomenon at work between systems levels, coupled with purposefully structured creative processes, holds the potential for catalyzing sustainable development efforts. Systemic analysis at varying scales is to foster creative emergence aligned with sustainability-oriented innovation.

This paper reports an ethnographic researcher’s shift towards the tech industry while maintaining the purpose of spotting opportunities and problems. It must be emphasized that whether working with remote communities in far-flung corners of the world or sitting in a room full of software developers, the concept remains the same: it is all about the users. Ethnographic researchers may not live with software developers but are getting increasingly closer to them. This paper aims to explain how this is done, i.e., by using participatory methods, such as field diaries. The first author’s initial realization of the full potential of diaries arose in Ethiopia and Mozambique, where efforts by institutions to help people often fail due to the lack of on-the-ground knowledge about the communities in which they operate. To address this, written and photo diaries were implemented so that community members could clearly express what is important in their everyday lives. In the current software company setting, we use the same method to understand what happens when users develop with our platform. The salient difference is that instead of receiving handwritten diaries and photos, we collect digital journals and screenshots from our users’ experience. This enables moving towards a continuous research vision to identify new user needs timely and ensure we are always building the right thing. However, by adopting this and other proactive approaches for generative research, new challenges are emerging regarding the efficient collection and analysis of large amounts of qualitative information.

From Introduction: In this chapter, occupational health and safety is approached from the viewpoints of both Human Factors and Ergonomics and standardization, including management systems standards. The field of Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) is summarily characterized, and a historical perspective of its evolution is given, in relationship to Human Factors and Ergonomics (HFE). While several components of what makes the field of OHS up today pre-existed as specialized fields before, the foundation of the discipline of HFE (following World War II)—and some of the genesis of HFE, OHS, and HFE—have developed as two distinct, although somewhat overlapping, areas of ac-tivity. Links and commonalities can be found today between the two. Environmental conditions (such as noise, climate, or lighting) are an example of an area that is dealt with within the discipline of HFE and is also a central concern of OHS. While inadequate postures and movements at work and psychosocial factors impinge on OHS, HFE is equipped with knowledge and methods to perform the design of work and to deal with these work design factors. Regarding legislation, regulations, and standardization, OHS has gained a head start compared to HFE (the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 in the U.S.A., the ILO R164 recommendation of 1981 at an in-ternational level, and the directive 89/391 on safety and health at work of 1989 in the EU), which supports the inclusion of this discussion on OHS standards within the realm of HFE standards, given the intersecting interests of the two disciplines. Regarding economic considerations, some HFE interventions have been the object of cost-benefit analyses reported in the literature. In what concerns OHS, the literature has focused on the cost of occupational accidents, injuries, illnesses, and fatalities. Estimates of costs and benefits of complying with (or adopting) OHS standards are also available in the form of literature dealing with the mandatory U.S. OSHA standards.