Ergonomics and Increasing Marginal Returns

Abstract

One of the biggest challenges for humans is to find a middle ground. This applies to a wide variety of situations and is especially useful when it comes to increasing productivity and preserve the health of people, taking into account that these two variables seem to be inversely proportional. This work aims to design a system to estimate the optimum point, related to the theory of diminishing marginal returns. The central idea is to get the point at which the additional resources generated higher returns, just before they a decreasing yield curve. From an ergonomic perspective, the resources used can be biomechanical or psychosocial: weights, repetitions, worktime or cognitive load. Through mathematical modeling work situations, and the results obtained and documented in industrial activity, we completed a model of two variables where the maximum point is where we get a derivative zero.