The projects that we carried out in recent years are divided into five main work areas; control centres, traffic centres, maritime, software and logistics. Each sector has its own challenges in terms of human factors, as will be explained on the subpages, including some examples of projects.
Many control room projects concern an upgrade of existing instrumentation in a control room, as well as a further automation in the field. A typical project starts with the analysis of the tasks and the work situation. The findings are talked over with the users and project team. After this, several layouts are drafted which clarify the pro’s and cons of different concepts.
Manufacturing and logistic systems usually involve manual work. Well designed tasks and workplaces increase productivity and reduce occupational health risks.
Signals of high work pressure are often rather the expression of discontent about the organization of the work, recognition or contact on the workplace, than excessive workload. ErgoS puts such signals into perspective and provides support in optimizing jobs.
In the maritime sector, optimizing the relationship between people and technology is a key factor in the overall performance. Special ergonomic issues concerning sensory perception (like night vision), environmental factors, physical load or workload in 24-hour working situations have to be optimized.
ErgoS is active in different areas of the maritime sector. For example, ships’ bridges, control posts for coastal and inland traffic, locks and bridges, maritime HCI, and offshore production (gas and oil).
ErgoS has done projects in several other work areas. This page displays a variety of those projects.
Many projects are a mix of HMI design and design of the physical workplace and hardware. Software projects may be limited to administrative applications, such as database applications for banking and insurance, others may be embedded machine interfaces. Screen size varies from smartphone size to multiple desktop screens and video walls.
Operators in traffic centres use a combination of computer applications, CCTV and communication technology to monitor and control traffic flows, and quickly respond to incidents and alarms. The safety of people is always at stake and situational awareness is a very important basis to the operator for taking the right decisions
