Humaneering Technology

Humaneering technology is the human-science equivalent to the physical-science technology, engineering, applied to work systems. Humaneering is derived largely from the human sciences of biology, psychology, sociology and philosophy and is effective for the design of people-dependent or adaptive work systems, whereas engineering is derived largely from the physical sciences of chemistry and physics and effective for the design of machine-dependent or standardized work systems.

In effect, humaneering enhances the design and management of people-dependent work system elements, whereas engineering enhances the design and management of machine-like work system elements. The design or architecting of man-made work systems typically involves both people-dependent and machine-like elements, and applying humaneering and engineering technologies respectively for the design and management of these system elements enables maximum overall system performance. Conversely, work systems are sub-optimized when only humaneering or engineering is applied, or either humaneering or engineering is misapplied to work system elements for which the respective technologies are not effective.

The human sciences were still largely undeveloped and had not been synthesized into a humaneering technology by the time of the Industrial Revolution, such that the early designs of industrial work emphasized engineering concerns and virtually ignored the forces of human nature. Later applications of the human sciences to work were largely ignored by management. In the late 1930s, a distinguished industrial psychology scholar, Joseph Tiffin, called attention to humaneering—the missing technology—by recognizing the considerable value of having an integral human-science technology to improve the effectiveness of people at work.

In the ensuing years, human science scholars continued their efforts to expand and refine human-science knowledge, while consulting firms and individual practitioners applied this knowledge and pioneered increasingly comprehensive models of human behavior within work systems. However, the engineering-centric culture of business rendered much of this new potential inaccessible to management, if only because we see best what we already believe. Rapidly developing information technologies eventually flooded management with thousands of bits of piecemeal advice, much of it based on little more than a good story or shred of evidence and driven by visions of personal riches or fame rather than of effective operations. Today, management is pummeled annually with hundreds of new "must-read" books to distill and integrate into management practice, yet rarely has the time or temperament for such effort.

The vision of creating an integral human-science technology re-appeared as a proprietary development effort in the mid 1980s, and after many years of successful application some of its principle insights were shared publicly (PDF 137KB). This early proprietary approach to humaneering was later contributed to the Humaneering Institute to support the development of a more expansive, institutionally maintained, and freely accessible public version of humaneering technology. The Institute's current development of humaneering technology builds on this pioneering work, while extending its potential through ongoing research and development that continues to draw on the work of research scholars and workplace practitioners.

People familiar with humaneering's development suggest that this technology promises to be the principal enabler of 21st century post-industrial economic development, in the same way that engineering technology was the principle enabler of 20th century industrial economic development. History will tell. For now, it is well established in its field trials that humaneering technology will provide operations managers with a single, integrated technology for most effectively employing human capital to create economic value. In every type of work, humaneering consistently yields greater productivity from operations that depend on people.

Recognizing and adopting a new technology is not easy for people who have grown up and worked without that technology for their entire careers. To prevent unfamiliarity from becoming a barrier to improved enterprise performance, organizations that are innovation pioneers should apply for the available EarlyAccess (private beta) field trial initiatives, which consist of opportunities to apply humaneering technology to improve business operations. By working with the Institute to conduct these comparative experiments within your work culture, your managers will learn firsthand how to utilize humaneering to design more effective and robust work systems, how to best maximize the economic value creation of business operations, and how to develop people-based forms of operational competitive advantage.

For example, few operations managers would have believed that they could get a 30% lift in productivity by shifting from line to cell manufacturing, but that is just what many get. The use of kaizen initiatives and agile development methods have produced a similar result. How? Our research indicates that many operations managers have adopted these practices because of their results, yet still do not understand really why such results are produced by these approaches, yet remained unrealized by earlier efforts to optimize. In fact, cell production, kaizen initiatives and agile development are more productive precisely because these methods are better aligned with human nature, the force majeure of humaneering technology.

Did we mention that humaneering technology is free? The Institute is a non-profit organization with a mission to serve the public. When humaneering technology is released, it will be royalty free.  

Please contact us if you have questions about humaneering technology or would like to receive additional about how humaneering can benefit you.