Production activity analysed by an engineer and a psychologist: what contributions for taking health into account when designing production systems?

This article presents an interdisciplinary approach between the engineering and human sciences to improve the design of work situations, as much in terms of work quality as in those of workers’ health. To do this, we present feedback from experience of an intervention at an automobile equipment supplier in which an engineer and an occupational psychologist analysed the activity of assembly line workers in view to aiding designers to improve their design practices. This intervention from a dual standpoint provides designers with a vision of the real work done by the workers, thus aiding them to design future production resources that take better account of the health of the workers that use them. The article focuses on describing the way in which the authors performed this intervention, by placing emphasis on the contributions made by the methodology implemented in the framework of occupational psychology.