Insights into human factors at a truck manufacturing company

Abstract

This study was performed at a truck manufacturing company with three production lines. It employed a paper-based survey with two demographic questions, 16 Likert-type questions covering physical, cognitive and organisational human factors, and three qualitative questions to invite workers to state improvement ideas and current challenges and strengths. The response rate was 35%. The median across the 70 completed surveys for all human factors areas investigated was M=3 out of 4 maximum, except for the quality of instructions (M=2), physical load demands (M=2) and job variety (M=4). Statistically significant differences amongst the three production lines were observed for four human factors aspects. The years of work experience in the company were found significantly and negatively correlated with three human factors aspects. Most of the improvements suggested by the workers were related to organisational and procedural aspects. A similar focus was revealed for the challenges met, whereas collegial relationships were appreciated as the strongest area.