The word ERGONOMICS is derived from Greek language where ERGON means work and NOMOS means study.

A Standard English dictionary gives meaning of ergonomics as the study of people's efficiency in their working environment. It is also termed as Human Factors Engineering in USA. The study of work environments has evolved rapidly in the past decades where the researchers started using Ergonomics to improve the productivity by studying the work space and the anthropometry of employees. The Ergonomics also deals with the safety aspects where in the guidelines set by the work space study tries to keep the workers safe within work environment. Thousands of research papers have been published on the safety aspects. Jean-Claude Sagot, Vale rie Gouin, Samuel Gomes in their paper have given a number of methodological and theoretical indicators concerning the contribution of ergonomists to the execution of design projects of new products. This paper, through the ergonomic study of a number of technical sub-systems of this product, illustrates the advisory role of the ergonomist who, within the collective design process, ensures that the specific nature of the human factor is fully integrated into the design approach. Ergonomics focuses on human beings and their interaction with machines, materials, information, procedures and environments used in work and everyday living. Human factors discovers and applies information about human behavior, capabilities, limitations, and other characteristics to the design of products, machines, systems, tasks, jobs, and work-environments for productive, safe, comfortable, and effective human use. The International Labor organization (ILO) has defined the term Ergonomics as the application of human biological sciences in conjunction with engineering sciences to the worker and his work environment, so as to obtain maximum job satisfaction, which at the same time enhances productivity. Ergonomics is the science of fitting the job to the worker. In a phrase, the task/job must fit the person in all respects, and the work situation and environment should not compromise with human capabilities and limitations. In general human factors finds out the best possible match between the physical and mental demands of work and the capabilities of the individual members of the workforce in order to optimize both the productivity of the organization and the physiological cost of human beings. In a sense, the goal of human factors is to guide the applications of technology in the direction of benefiting humanity. The ergonomics has wide spread presence in automotive industry where it os used to design the passenger compartment and the driver seats. Vehicle Packaging is one of interesting field in which, the organization of space for people and the parts of a vehicle to suite a specific need or transport. It is the first consideration for shaping the vehicle. At Vehicle Package stage, factors such as engine size, weight, width, height, luggage, number of passengers and their seating arrangement are targeted. Knowing all the said parameters plus more will help to establish a range of dimension within a category of vehicle types and cost, enabling the designer to target the shape of vehicle on a "family of dimensions" that will make it competitive. Vehicle Packaging actually dictates of how a vehicle should be designed. It provides all the necessary information for the styling designers and part designers to proceed with at the following stage. Without vehicle packaging input, all the design engineers will not be able to proceed with the design concept in details. On the other hand, since Vehicle Packaging is meant to provide suitable space for people and parts in vehicle, human factor consideration is a must for the

integration of the total design. In vehicle design, the term human factor is interchangeably called as automotive ergonomics.