Ergonomic Improvements at an Electric Appliance Company in Korea

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to present ergonomic improvements made at the electric appliance company in Korea. The Ergonomics Society of Korea has been sponsoring the Ergonomic Design award for workplace design. For this award, an ergonomic study was conducted to improve workplaces to reduce musculoskeletal problems for six months. All processes were first evaluated by workers and processes which were identified as problematic were analyzed by the company-wide committee to set the priority of improvement. Then an ergonomic improvement team consisted of a safety and health personnel, process engineers, and a management innovation personnel worked on the processes using a low cost approach. It was found that applying ergonomics at a low cost ($1.25 million) could improve technically advanced workplaces and resulted in increasing productivity (10–30%) and cost saving (approximately $17.01 million) and improved the safety level.