Essay Sample on Ergonomic Assessments: Improve Safety & Productivity

Introduction

Ergonomic assessments look into the risks involved in the workplace and are done to reduce accidents and increase productivity. Ergonomic assessments are crucial to an organization because they help in improving the efficiency of employees together with ascertaining their safety. Ergonomic assessment tools are used to analyze the risks and detect injuries that may occur in the workplace. The following are ergonomic assessment tools that may be used to analyze a workplace.

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NIOSH Lifting Equation

The NIOSH lifting equation is used to determine the risks involved in lifting and lowering activities by employees at work. The equation determines the recommended weight limit (RWL) an employee can handle without straining their muscles within 8 hours in the workplace (Fox, 2019).

Rapid Entire Body Assessment (REBA)

The method uses a procedural approach to analyze the entire body and the risks involved in performing duties. The required body posture is investigated by assessing and assigning a score to the various body parts according to their movements and risks involved (Schwartz, 2019).

Washington State Ergonomic and MSD Risk Assessment Checklist

This tool is used in analyzing unusual postures and intensive and repetitive movements by using a caution checklist to identify risky and safe activities (Occhipinti, 2016). safe operations have a positive score, while hazardous activities have a negative score and are evaluated further using hazard checklist. A positive score in the hazard checklist indicates that the risk is high, and it should be handled immediately.

Rapid Upper Limb Assessment (RULA)

The main aim of the RULA tool is to evaluate the risk exposure to the upper body while performing tasks (Erliana, 2019). It avails a scoring of the actions and also indicates the tasks that need immediate attention due to high risk.

Conclusion

Ergonomics assessment tools are crucial to an organization since they help in reducing costs, maximizing productivity, improving employee engagement, and also ensuring that the workplace is a safe environment.

References

Erliana, K., Kautsar, F., Oktaviani, D., Yuniawan, D., Hariyanto, S., Andriono, D., ... & Firdiansyah, R. (2019, November). Solving Office Ergonomics Problem Using Rapid Upper Limb Assessment (RULA). In 2019 1st International Conference on Engineering and Management in Industrial System (ICOEMIS 2019). Atlantis Press.

Fox, R. R., Lu, M. L., Occhipinti, E., & Jaeger, M. (2019). Understanding outcome metrics of the revised NIOSH lifting equation. Applied ergonomics, 81, 102897.

Occhipinti, E., & Colombini, D. (2016). A toolkit for the analysis of biomechanical overload and prevention of WMSDs: Criteria, procedures, and tool selection in a step-by-step approach. International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics, 52, 18-28.

Schwartz, A. H., Albin, T. J., & Gerberich, S. G. (2019). Intra-rater and inter-rater reliability of the rapid entire body assessment (REBA) tool. International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics, 71, 111-116.