Engineering Controls for Safe and Effective Manual Materials Handling

Abstract

This paper combines the traditional engineering and managerial approach in materials transport with Ergonomics/Human Factors findings and principles. The transport of materials should be systematically and purposely designed to be automatically part of the process and, as such, not becoming a “handling problem”. If full automatism cannot be achieved, human controlled and operated equipment can be used. For its efficiency and safety, it must be carefully designed, selected, and operated according to human engineering principles. “Manual” materials “handling” is a last resort, indicating failure on the side of the engineer to assign a transport task to machines.