ABSTRACT
Ergonomics design of the workspace and that of many workstations requires making decisions regarding placement (layout) of a great number of objects (machinery, devices, tools) utilized by workers. Such a layout should allow for effective functioning of the human-machine systems. The placement of objects (layout design) is, therefore, an important ergonomic design problem for simple and complex systems and structures. Ergonomic layouts should be based on optimalization of specific ergonomic criteria. For this purpose, one must formulate measurable functions, i.e. the criteria appropriate to a given design situation. Such functions must allow one to distinguish between the better and worse projects. The formal layout algorithms and optimalization methods in many cases allow to find solutions which are the best or close to it.
