ABSTRACT
Planning, design, and evaluation of work should be preceded by an analysis of the job, the work tasks, and the resulting demands that are placed on the worker. This type of systematic analysis following a standard pattern is performed in only very few cases, mainly manual jobs in industry. Instead,
ad hoc
procedures relating to the individual case are used. No further use is made of the data after the immediate problem has been solved. This would, in any case, be impossible because the analytical instrument is either totally or, at least, partially inapplicable outside the confines of the company that used it. This means that companies regularly “reinvent the wheel.” Analytical data that could be further evaluated for general purposes is not passed on, and the opportunity to further develop the discipline of ergonomics is lost. No taxonomies of jobs and tasks can be compiled, and questions relating to occupational research are left unanswered.
