• 대한인간공학회지
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• 제34권2호
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• pp.135-143
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• 2015

Objective: The purposes of this study are to investigate ergonomic problems and to propose their improving measures in office environment of big general hospitals. Background: Office tasks have varying risk factors of work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs). The first symptom resulted from the office work was recognized as an occupational disease in Korea in 1986. Although the symptoms have increased since its first recognition, there has been few study on the effect of office work environment settings. Method: First, the author took pictures of working scenes performed in three big university hospitals. Next, the pictures were analyzed in view point of ergonomics. Based on the analysis, their improving measures were proposed for reducing work stress. Results: The results showed that most physical office environment settings such as dimensions of tables/desks and chairs, leg room, thigh, knee and foot clearances, and chairs used did not satisfy the ergonomically recommended design guidelines. In addition, some clerks placed personal belongings under their desks, put monitors in high position and did not lean against the backrest of chairs in seated tasks, which resulted in poor working postures of leg, back, neck etc. It is recommended that the hospital management should provide their clerks with ergonomically designed office furniture and continuously perform ergonomics training program for raising clerks' recognition for office ergonomics. Conclusion: Most office environment settings investigated in this study were not in good condition in view point of ergonomic design for the settings. Application: It would be useful as basic data for establishing ergonomically good office environment in hospitals.

• 대한인간공학회지
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• 제29권2호
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• pp.203-210
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• 2010

For the development of a better product which fits to the target user population, physical workloads such as reach and visibility are evaluated using digital human simulation in the early stage of product development; however, ergonomic workload assessment mainly relies on visual observation of reach envelopes and view cones generated in a 3D graphic environment. The present study developed a quantitative assessment method of physical workload in a digital environment and applied to the evaluation of a Korean utility helicopter (KUH) cockpit design. The proposed assessment method quantified physical workloads for the target user population by applying a 3-step process and identified design features requiring improvement based on the quantified workload evaluation. The scores of physical workloads were quantified in terms of posture, reach, visibility, and clearance, and 5-point scales were defined for the evaluation measures by referring to existing studies. The postures of digital humanoids for a given task were estimated to have the minimal score of postural workload by finding all feasible postures that satisfy task constraints such as a contact between the tip of the index finger and a target point. The proposed assessment method was applied to evaluate the KUH cockpit design in the preliminary design stage and identified design features requiring improvement. The proposed assessment method can be utilized to ergonomic evaluation of product designs using digital human simulation.

• Industrial Engineering and Management Systems
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• 제6권2호
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• pp.146-157
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• 2007

This paper discusses two algorithms for recommending notebook computer (NBC) and workstation adjustments so that the user can assume an ergonomic seated posture during NBC operation. Required input data are the user's anthropometric data and physical dimensions of the NBC and the workstation. The first algorithm is based on an assumption that there are no workstation constraints while the second algorithm considers the actual seat height and work surface height. The results from the algorithms include recommendations for adjusting the NBC (tilt angle of the NBC base unit, angle between the base and screen units, and base support height) and the workstation (heights of seat support and footrest, and distance between the body and the NBC).

• 대한인간공학회지
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• 제29권4호
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• pp.393-404
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• 2010

The purpose of this study is to identify the trends and features of existing articles on work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSD), and to suggest the direction for future work. Articles on WMSD were reviewed and analyzed by research objects and characteristics. This paper describes a number of issues related to strategies and practices which were done in order to prevent work-related musculoskeletal disorders; 1) trends and characteristics of work-related musculoskeletal disorders, 2) legal enforcement related to systems preventing WMSD, 3) workplace assessment methods and guidelines for manual material handling, 4) ergonomic intervention, ergonomics program and its effectiveness. A list of recommendations presented in this study can be used to provide a baseline for the prevention of work-related musculoskeletal disorders.

• 대한인간공학회지
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• 제24권1호
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• pp.37-41
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• 2005

Work related musculoskeletal disorders became a hot issue in Korea since many workers reported musculoskeletal disorder problems. Korean government enacted a law to require companies to take measures to prevent musculoskeletal disorders at work. This study found workers' WMSDs symptoms in squatting work posture which the rate of the occurrence was relatively high among work types to bring about WMSDs in railroad cars maintenance works and analyzed to compare the hazardous jobs in the industrial safety health law in South Korea with the caution jobs in Washington State in U.S. The hazardous jobs in South Korea were more effective in squatting work posture from this study result and this study data will be a great help to plan and carry out an effective prevention program about WMSDs.

• 대한인간공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 대한인간공학회 2004년도 추계학술대회
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• pp.2-2
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• 2004

• 대한인간공학회지
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• 제30권1호
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• pp.251-257
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• 2011

When designing a ship, ergonomic considerations are crucial when minimizing a navigator's fatigue due to the burden of work, and to appropriately operate the navigational equipment for each given situation by helping the operator to understand the surroundings as well as the physical functions of the ship. However, insufficient consideration of ergonomic elements in the actual design of ship Bridges is lowering the performance of safe navigation and allows for the possibility of operation or readout errors. Consequently, these errors lead to an increase in maritime accidents. Therefore, this study conducted a usability evaluation on the importance of and the usage frequency of navigational equipment, their influence on actual navigation, and the possibility of error upon operation or readout between training ship officers, to derive an optimized layout that includes the consideration of ergonomic factors for on-Bridge navigational equipment, which are currently arranged differently according to their type or size. The optimized layout of on-Bridge navigational equipment was carried out based on the evaluation results, using the Lingo program. Through the process of optimization, revised layouts of on-Bridge navigational equipments(control and display device) were suggested, considering emergency situations(ship collision, stranding, fire and explosion, sinking, etc.) during navigation.

• 한국안전학회지
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• 제36권5호
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• pp.61-70
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• 2021

This study aimed to analyze the research trends of the abstract data of ergonomic studies registered in MEDLINE, a medical bibliographic database, using word embedding. Medical-related ergonomic studies mainly focus on work-related musculoskeletal disorders, and there are no studies on the analysis of words as data using natural language processing techniques, such as word embedding. In this study, the abstract data of ergonomic studies were extracted with a program written with selenium and BeutifulSoup modules using python. The word embedding of the abstract data was performed using the word2vec model, after which the data found in the abstract were vectorized. The vectorized data were visualized in two dimensions using t-Distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding (t-SNE). The word "ergonomics" and ten of the most frequently used words in the abstract were selected as keywords. The results revealed that the most frequently used words in the abstract of ergonomics studies include "use", "work", and "task". In addition, the t-SNE technique revealed that words, such as "workplace", "design", and "engineering," exhibited the highest relevance to ergonomics. The keywords observed in the abstract of ergonomic studies using t-SNE were classified into four groups. Ergonomics studies registered with MEDLINE have investigated the risk factors associated with workers performing an operation or task using tools, and in this study, ergonomics studies were identified by the relationship between keywords using word embedding. The results of this study will provide useful and diverse insights on future research direction on ergonomic studies.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• 제7권1호
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• pp.86-87
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• 2016

• 대한인간공학회지
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• 제24권2호
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• pp.57-63
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• 2005

Ergonomic intervention techniques were adopted to assess and control potential risk factors of work-related musculoskeletal disorders(WMSDs) in the automated light assembly manufacturing system. Ten different kinds of assembly workstations implemented with a conveyor system and twelve female workers were observed and evaluated with careful video film analysis. Several close examinations using sets of checklists established by qualified safety and health organizations, such as NIOSH, OSHA, and ANSI, were conducted and every workers and staffs in the site participated in the self-report questionnaires and off-line interviews. Typical risk factors and symptoms of the upper extremity musculoskeletal disorders were found and categorized into specific parts of body. To reduce risk factors of WMSDs and improve system productivity new revised workstation standards, physical dimensions, were suggested accordant with anthropometric characteristics of workers and a heuristic decision strategy of rotating shift work schedules according to work contents has proposed to mitigate cumulative physical stress. Finally, ergonomic programs of entire company to prevent WMSDs were structured.