German automaker reworks assembly line processes to ease older workers’ strain. In BASE, there is a course, namely, Production and Operations Analysis in Product Design Engineering (PDE) that equips students with not only PDE related competencies, but also Industrial Engineering within more comprehensive trilogy of technical, human skills and conceptual. It is beneficial to equips students career ladder in the future, commencing by technical position, until the top management with its comprehensive conceptual's helicopter view and analysis.

Source: ISE Magazine 2019 (Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE) 2019).

Though many of the world’s workplaces includes technology that is geared toward the future, one automaker is doing so by making its processes easier on older workers. Like many industries, the workforce at Porsche is aging. The average age of workers in Germany is 37, but the country has one of the world’s fastest aging populations, and by 2030, a third of people in this region will be older than 64.

Porsche is revising its process and equipment to keep workers healthy and happy beyond retirement age. “We have to make efforts today for the future ... for our employees,” said Porsche’s trainer of Improvement Processes, Frank Reichel. In one adaption, car bodies are tipped to a 90-degree angle on one part of the line so employees don’t have to bend down to reach their work area.

On another, a worker sitting on a chair presses a button and is moved inside the car rather than having to climb in and out multiple times per day. Porsche is also working on a new exoskeleton that takes weight off employees’ arms as they work overhead. Alissa Frey, the company’s industrial engineer for ergonomics, said it aims to distribute the weight from the arms to the hips. “They can do it for longer, and it’s better for their muscles,” she said. Workers are also rotated to different stations every hour to use different muscles and avoid too much repetition. Olaf Hoffman, 51, praises a machine that put tires on cars and avoids making him lift them into place. “As you get older, the harder it is to find certain work,” he said. “But if you are supported by these machines, you can perform these tasks and keep doing these jobs and work longer.” Many of the ideas for improvement come from the employees themselves.

Porsche runs a reward program to encourage its workers to become actively involved in making improvements.