Faced with an aging workforce whose average age will increase from 41.4 to 46.4 years between 2008 and 2018, BMW has opted for prevention.
To minimize the health problems of older employees doing repetitive, tiring work, the German carmaker implemented an experimental program in its Dingolfing, Bavaria plant. Called “Today for Tomorrow,” the project aims to make bottom-up improvements, such replacing the cement floor with wooden flooring, adapting shoes to width and weight, lowering and inclining the control monitors to spare workers from having to look up hundreds of time a day, displaying information in large fonts and rotating workstations every four hours. According to BMW, these many simple, yet inexpensive details have made a difference.
Both older and younger workers like the program, which has increased the test team’s productivity by 7% in two years. Based on this result, BMW has extended the pilot project to its Munich, Steyr and Leipzig plants.