Detailed Physical Exposure Assessments in Ergonomics Field Studies

Abstract

One of the major ergonomics activities in SHARP is to identify risk factors which may cause work-related musculoskeletal disorders in workplaces and recommend effective solutions to help industries to improve their work conditions. Effective identification of risk factors and provision of specific solutions require a sensitive, valid and reliable measurement system. A continuous effort in SHARP has been to develop such a system to fulfill our goals. This paper discusses some major elements in the system, i.e. measurement of physical exposures of the operators, quantification and documentation of task distribution of jobs, and establishment of relationships between physical exposure measurement and task operations. Three field applications (wood processing, poultry processing and data entry jobs) of this measurement system are presented in this paper.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Jonsson

, 1982. Measurement and evaluation of local muscular strain on the shoulder during constrained work. Journal of Human Ergology, 11, 73–88.

Marras

W. S.

Schoenmarklin

R. W.

(1993). Wrist motions in industry. Ergonomics, 36, 341–351.

Mathiassen

S. E.

Gloria

(1994). A comprehensive program package - MUFDAP - for analyzing data from ergonomic studies. (pp. 374–376), Proceedings of International Ergonomics Association 12th Triennial Congress, Toronto, 374–376.

McAtamney

Corlett

E. N.

(1993). RULA: a survey method for the investigation of work-related upper limb disorders. Applied Ergonomics, 24, 91–99.

Yen

T. Y.

Radwin

R. G.

(1995). A video-based system for acquiring biomechanical data synchronized with arbitrary events and activites. IEEE Transactions on Biomechanical Engineering, 42, 944–948.