Human-centered manufacturing for the developing world

One of the most important issues in designing human-centered systems must be to understand the driving force/spl minus/the human components. The point is simple: when developing the solution to any engineering problem, the designer must understand the capacities, the inherent nature and all the operational characteristics of the component parts available for constructing the final system. Designers now must understand the inherent nature of the people who will be part of the final systems. Of importance too is the very evident fact that each person is an individual and each national grouping has its own distinctive characteristics. Thus, human-centered manufacturing systems will need to be customized to meet local conditions. The starting point is to understand why people work. Only by appreciating this can designers begin to integrate people effectively into systems. Getting any developing country back into manufacturing requires the recognition that any production facility must be optimized to produce products which compete on a global scale, and must be designed to take into consideration all local factors. In searching for the appropriate mix of humans and machines, the local situation is critical, and so is the need to understand, and subsequently to use in the design of manufacturing systems, the cultural aspects of the humans who will be involved.<>