What is the process of designing tasks and work areas to maximize efficiency and safety known as?

The process of designing tasks and work areas to maximize efficiency and safety is known as ergonomics. This discipline focuses on understanding how people interact with their environment and aims to optimize the workspace, tools, and tasks to fit the capabilities and limitations of workers.

Ergonomics is grounded in the principles of human factors, ensuring that the physical and cognitive demands of a job do not exceed an individual’s capabilities, thus minimizing the risk of injury and enhancing productivity. This can involve adjusting workstation height, designing tools that minimize strain, and reorganizing workflow to reduce unnecessary movement.

In contrast, biomechanics primarily deals with the mechanical laws relating to the movement or structure of living organisms, but it does not encompass the broader context of task design or environmental interaction. Safety engineering focuses on identifying and mitigating hazards in a workplace but is not specifically oriented toward optimizing human interaction with their environment for efficiency and safety. Environmental design refers to the planning of physical spaces to improve quality of life and is more about aesthetics and function rather than the specific task-oriented approach of ergonomics.