Abstract
The Hazard Impact Project (HIP-sawmill) of the Washington State sawmills was presented in this paper. This project involved multiple parties to tackle work-related musculoskeletal disorders in the sawmill industry. Five sawmills voluntarily participated in this project. Based on injury statistics, the project team decided to select lumber handler jobs to be studied. Site visits were conducted and jobs were analyzed using a number of different evaluation tools including the newly published Washington State's Ergonomics Regulation. Evaluations were done between comparable production processes in the five sawmills in order to determine variations of physical exposure and identify solutions. It was found that often solutions to problems at one sawmill could be found at another sawmill. Sometimes solutions to reduce or eliminate certain risk factors at one job might be located at the up-stream of the production line, rather than at the workstation where the risk factors were identified. Simple solutions could reduce physical exposure and improve productivity. Automation in many cases could reduce or eliminate some high risks, but may incur high cost to the companies. However, many automations may be primarily introduced to solve production problems.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.