Applications of the Standardized Nordic Questionnaire: A Review

Sustainability seeks to provide economically viable products in an environmentally friendly way while respecting worker rights. Physical wellbeing forms part of these rights. Musculoskeletal disorders (MSD) diminish productivity, cause absence from work, impose costs on the public health system and can cast doubt on the sustainability of a company or a product. The objective of the present work is to review the literature on the application of the Nordic Musculoskeletal Questionnaire (NMQ) on a worldwide level. In this work, the use of the NMQ has been classified by categories of knowledge, countries and years. The search was made using “Web of Science-Core Collection”. In total, 259 articles were chosen from scientific journals and conferences related, according to the title and or abstract, to the practical application of the questionnaire. In conclusion, the NMQ has been applied mainly in three sectors: “activities related to treating human health and social issues”, “manufacturing industries”, and “agriculture, livestock, fishing, and forestry”. The NMQ is an indirect method commonly used individually or complemented with other methods for evaluating the MSD and possible associated psychosocial and labour risks. The use of NMQ can help in the evaluation of the sustainability of a company

Achieving workplace inclusiveness by using ergonomics risk assessment

Traditional manufacturing work practices do not consider human variability issues during the design process. However, most manual assembly activities demand high levels of repetition and speed without compromising product quality and work productivity. Individual factors including age, gender, skill, experience and anthropometry cause variations in task strategies that lead to variations in individual and organizational work performance. The ergonomics-based risk assessment methods OWAS, REBA and RULA have been used to evaluate risk levels associated with working methods. This paper discusses the need for these methods to understand and highlight the key issues generated by these variations with the objective of minimizing these variations. Methods that can be used to promote working strategies that minimize the level of risk are described. The proposed research method potentially reduces work-related musculoskeletal disorders, injuries, pain, and promotes safe, healthy, productive and more inclusive working strategies suitable for a diverse working population

A New Approach to Ergonomic Physical Risk Evaluation in Multi-Purpose Workplaces

The profile of human factors and ergonomics is rising. To provide an ergonomic work environment, it is necessary to pay special attention to the design and evaluation of the workplace. Traditional production work practices do not sufficiently take into account task variability in job design and assessment. Variations in task content, organizational work performance are seen due to the effective use of equipment, which enables higher levels of productivity to be reached. However, this variation has an impact on physical ergonomics risk factors and, consequently, on the risk of developing work-related musculoskeletal disorders. Variations can cause difficulties in assessing workers\u27 exposure to ergonomic risk. This study aims to develop a framework for the evaluation of physical ergonomic risk in multi-purpose workplaces. The presented framework integrates the concepts of well-known observation techniques used in the assessment of physical ergonomic risk factors in the multi-purpose workplace. The research framework highlights a worker\u27s exposure to the ergonomic risk and illustrates how these results can be used to find solutions in future ergonomic interventions. The framework\u27s application is presented by illustrative case studies. Theoretical, managerial and practical features of the framework are discussed

Ergonomics in "remote work" activities: a workstation adaptation case study in Brazil

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic decreed by the outbreak of the new coronavirus culminated in the need to implement jobs in the homes of employees who had to adhere to the “remote work” style, due to social isolation actions in Brazil. Many of the employees started to work in the absence of adequate working conditions in their homes, impacting the three dimensions of ergonomics, i.e., physical, organizational and cognitive. The objective of this chapter is to report the adjustments made in a workplace after the change of modality from face-to-face (f2f) activities to “remote work” after the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, aiming to adopt actions aimed at ergonomics. The research was carried out with a professional in the area of Environmental and Sanitary Engineering who started remote work in March 2020. The work is of a qualitative nature, using photos to illustrate the changes occurring before and after the installation of the equipments and reports on strategies to improve working conditions in the “remote work”. The cost of physical adaptations was also computed. The most reported complaints collected by the professional were back pain, neck, forearm, wrist and eye pain, in addition to mental fatigue. The necessary equipment and furniture were acquired for the physical adaptation of the workspace. Issues of working hours, days off, means of communication were also addressed, but aspects of cognitive and organizational ergonomics must have the participation of the entire work group to achieve effective results. The accompaniment of a specialized technical professional would be important for the establishment of further assertive actions, seeking the productivity and quality of life of the employee.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Towards an ergonomic assessment framework for industrial assembly workstations - a case study

Work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSD) are one of the main occupational health problems. The best strategy to prevent them lies on ergonomic interventions. The variety of industrial processes and environments, however, makes it difficult to define an all-purpose framework to guide these ergonomic interventions. This undefinition is exacerbated by recurrent introduction of new technologies, e.g., collaborative robots. In this paper, we propose a framework to guide ergonomics and human factors practitioners through all stages of assessment and redesign of workstations. This framework was applied in a case study at an assembly workstation of a large furniture enterprise. Direct observation of work activity and questionnaires were applied to characterize the workstations, the process, and the workers’ profiles and perceptions. An ergonomic multi-method approach, based on well-known and validated methods (such as the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health and Rapid Upper Limb Assessment), was applied to identify the most critical risk factors. We concluded that this approach supports the process redesign and tasks’ allocation of the future workstation. From these conclusions, we distill a list of requirements for the creation of a collaborative robot cell, specifying which tasks are performed by whom, as well as the scheduling of the human-robot collaboration (HRC).This work has been supported by NORTE-06-3559-FSE-000018, integrated in the invitation NORTE-59-2018-41, aiming the Hiring of Highly Qualified Human Resources, co-financed by the Regional Operational Programme of the North 2020, thematic area of Competitiveness and Employment, through the European Social Fund (ESF). This work has been also supported by FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the R&D Units Project Scope: UIDB/00319/2020

Adapting Ergonomic Assessments to Social Life Cycle Assessment

In Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA), the health and safety aspect of workers is usually evaluated by considering the numbers of injuries and accidents; however, the work related musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs), which dominate occupational diseases, are often neglected in SLCA since the effects do not occur immediately. Thus, the MSDs lead to increased working absences and compensation costs, and also reduced productivity of workers. To address the gap, applying ergonomic assessment is proposed since it identifies and quantifies the health risks at work based on a set of pre-defined criteria e.g. force, posture, repetition and duration, and provides the numeric results analyzing the physical load and their sources. In the study, the application of ergonomic assessment and its indicators in SLCA is displayed to screen risks and to further improve working place design