Work Study and Ergonomics

Introduction

The reasons behind injuries in a variety of work-related circumstances have been possible to observe since last few decades. For example, consider the case of physically demanding jobs such as casting process in steel industries where a number of tasks involve heavy lifting, carrying, pulling, pushing and moving of equipment in awkward postures that may result into musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs). So, the primary cause of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) has been found as manual material-handling tasks.

Likewise in the service industry, IT professionals devote six to eight hours on video display terminals (VDT) and consequently they undergo some MSD complaints. Employees of any organization, who are physically engaged in the task, are unknowingly exposed to the bad work posture. In hospitals the professionals such as dentists, ophthalmologists and nurses are exposed to frequent bending posture while attending patients. Similarly in manufacturing industry also the shop floor workers are working in bad postures, chronic effect of ergonomically bad posture could result in MSD complaints like low back ache, neck pain, wrist stiffness, etc. have been reported by different authors like; Singh et. al (2010). These further could result in low back injuries, cervical problems and carpals tunnel syndromes, etc. Therefore, it becomes very essential that as a preventive measure, the work posture of employees/workers must be investigated using suitable tools. Although, there are a number of ergonomic tools available for the MSD risk assessment out of which RULA (Rapid Upper Limb Assessment) and REBA (Rapid Entire Body Assessment) are the most prevailing for work posture assessment.

The objective of this chapter is to make the reader understand about the procedural steps of using the ergonomic tools to analyze the working postures of an employee or workers. Hence the cases of workers engaged in various processes of small scale casting industry have been taken and discussed. The present chapter is confined to the used two assessments tools, i.e., Rapid Upper Limb Assessment (RULA) and Rapid Entire Body Assessment (REBA) that recommend the various body postural changes to be made while working.

In 1993, McAtamney and Corlett develop an ergonomics tool known as RULA which is used to assess the risk of musculoskeletal disorders caused in sedentary tasks having high demand of upper body.