• 대한인간공학회지
• /
• 제25권2호
• /
• pp.173-180
• /
• 2006

An ergonomic study of school environment and school desks and chairs was conducted in Incheon metropolitan area. Total of 1,145 students from 11 schools participated in questionnaire survey and ergonomic evaluation of school desks and chairs was performed to study structural appropriateness and usability. Results of the study revealed that overall levels of school environment in terms of noise and dust density in the air were higher than safety standard. Desks and chairs were not properly designed with consideration of student's anthropometric characteristics. Prompt improvement of school environment and re-designing of school furniture are required in order to prevent reduced performance in study and physical disorders such as musculoskeletal disorders.

• 대한안전경영과학회지
• /
• 제23권3호
• /
• pp.1-9
• /
• 2021

Crane is an important equipment for the transport of heavy goods in industrial sites, but it is also known as one of the most fatal machines. In order to reduce crane accidents, it is necessary to minimize human errors during crane operations. To achieve this, ergonomic design principles are recommended to be reflected from the crane design stage. The study analyzed the safety certification standards for crane that should be fulfilled at the crane design and manufacturing stage. This study selected five representative ergonomic design principles (feedback, compatibility, consistency, full-proof, and fail-safe) by surveying heuristic evaluation principles that are widely used for usability evaluation in early design stage. Next, the principles were applied to the safety certification standards to identify insufficient clauses. This study identified 12 insufficient clauses out of 119 in the current safety certification standards for crane and discussed their improvement directions to comply the ergonomic principles. The analysis results of this study can help of improving the safety certification standards and the method used in this study can also be applied to identify insufficient clauses in the safety certification standards for other industrial machines such as press machine and lift.

• 대한안전경영과학회지
• /
• 제22권2호
• /
• pp.31-38
• /
• 2020

The study evaluated the accuracy and intra-rater reliability for OWAS (Ovako Working posture Analysing System), RULA (Rapid Upper Limb Assessment), REBA (Rapid Entire Body Assessment) to improve their evaluation accuracy and reliability. Participants (n = 163) with undergraduate degree were recruited in this study and trained for 6 hours about the ergonomic assessment methods. Ergonomic assessments were conducted using OWAS, RULA, and REBA for a representative work with dynamic posture found in manufacturing industries. The study compared action categories (overall level) and detailed evaluation scores for individual body part. Action categories of the participants significantly differed from the golden reference defined by ergonomic experts. The participants underrated or omitted scores for truck (37.4% of the participants) and legs (52.8%) in OWAS. Similarly, the participants underrated or omitted additional scores for all body parts except the hand and wrist in RULA (53.5%) and REBA (54.8%). On the other hand, the participants overrated scores for the hand and wrist in RULA (55.2%) and REBA (39.9%). The results found in this study can help of selecting focus points and parts during assessment and education to improve accuracy and reliability of the ergonomic assessment methods.

• 한국산업보건학회지
• /
• 제19권2호
• /
• pp.88-95
• /
• 2009

There are many assessment techniques used for occupational risk factors of MSDs in the workplaces. However, because all ergonomic assesment techniques or tools are based on theoretical background derived from workphysiology, biomechanics, psychophysics, industrial hygiene, work system, and etc, it is impossible to compare the assessment techniques. This study was conducted to compare the excess rates of risk factors among ergonomic assessment techniques and to make alternative methods. Site-visits to 6 automobile products and parts company provided data for process repeated work where the produced data was examined for evaluating the relationship between workplace lay-out and work posture by using ergonomic assessment techniques. We evaluated 157 jobs for simple repeated work and 37 jobs for manual materials handling (MMH). In simple repeated work, the exceeded rates of AC were 36.3% in OWAS method and 93.0% in RULA method. The exceeded rate for RULA method was significantly higher than those for OWAS method (p<0.05). In MMH, the exceeded rates of AC were 80.0% in NLE method and 76.5% in WAC method. Statistically significant differences were not identified in the exceeded rates for NLE and MAC methods (p<0.05). The analyzed results among ergonomic assessment techniques (OWAS, RULA, NLE/WAC) were applied to the same work places performing simple repeated work and manual materials handling simultaneously. The applied results showed statistically significant differences (p<0.05) among ergonomic assessment techniques (OWAS, RULA, NLE/WAC). Exceeded rates of four ergonomic assessment techniques in decreasing order was "RULA>NLE>WAC>OWAS". The RULA method was the strongest assessment technique for automobile products and parts company. We discovered that the results could easily be overestimated or underestimated when the ergonomic assessment techniques were not applied correctly during the evaluation process. Therefore, we recommend using at least 2 methods when evaluating and analysing the results.

• 대한인간공학회지
• /
• 제26권4호
• /
• pp.85-90
• /
• 2007

This study shows a way to develop ergonomic design of a plier through quality function deployment (QFD) approach. User needs for pliers, as well as the engineering characteristics which have influence on the ergonomic quality of pliers were determined from the interviews and questionnaires with various user groups. This information was entered in the house of quality, and the results show that the handle is the most important quality factor. A new model was proposed in which ergonomic and gender aspects were considered. QFD is considered a suitable method especially for the manufacturing and/or design fields where biomechanical or physiological background is not present.

• 한국콘텐츠학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 한국콘텐츠학회 2004년도 춘계 종합학술대회 논문집
• /
• pp.535-539
• /
• 2004

This paper is concerned with structurizing contents of the ergonomic resources and constructing DB of these resources. Through this internet system developed using ultra 2 DB Server, Sun Solaris(UNIX) OS, UniSql DBMS, Apache Web server, the interface (www.gamsung.or.kr), by which ergonomic resources can be provided, has been completed. Information retrieval concerning ergonomic resources produced by the project "Business of Development in Technology of Human Sensibility Ergonomics" is possible. For example, 35 reports and 262 ergonomic characteristics issued from the first step of this project, 255 ergonomic characteristics issued from the second step. In addition, there are also voice data, sound data, expression data, questionnaire data, sensibility data, and information about researchers, manufactories, references.

• 대한인간공학회지
• /
• 제24권1호
• /
• pp.27-35
• /
• 2005

This paper describes a practical ergonomic approach for the shipbuilding industry that occupies the highest rate of work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSD) in Korea. Typical work processes within a shipbuilding operation were surveyed to determine the presence of risk factors associated with musculoskeletal disorders. We used interviews, document analysis, video analysis, and OWAS postural analysis to identify and quantify ergonomic risk factors that workers may be exposed to in the course of their normal work duties. Some ergonomics actions were performed to solve the problems identified in the risk factor analysis. The practical ergonomic approach has resulted in decreases in workers' accident, and increases in productivity. The ergonomic solutions developed in this study could be applied to other sectors of industry that share common features of work with shipbuilding industry.

• 대한인간공학회지
• /
• 제25권3호
• /
• pp.105-111
• /
• 2006

This paper summarizes the ergonomic risk assessment of hotel chef. The cooking operations were observed in order to determine sources of ergonomic stress and make recommendations to reduce the risk of work-related musculoskeletal disorders in Korean, Japanese, and western style cooking. We used interviews, document analysis, video analysis, and risk assessment to identify and quantify ergonomic risk factors. The results indicate that the cooking operations have some ergonomic problems. These findings identified in this study can be used to reduce the risk of work-related musculoskeletal disorders in food service areas.

• 대한산업공학회지
• /
• 제38권3호
• /
• pp.173-181
• /
• 2012

The size and layout of user interface components need to be optimally designed in terms of reachability, visibility, clearance, and compatibility in order for efficient and effective use of products. The present study develops an ergonomic design method which optimizes the size and layout of user interface components using adaptive genetic algorithm. The developed design method determines a near-optimal design which maximizes the aggregated score of 4 ergonomic design criteria (reachability, visibility, clearance, and compatibility). The adaptive genetic algorithm used in the present study finds a near-optimum by automatically adjusting the key parameter (probability of mutation) of traditional genetic algorithm according to the characteristic of current solutions. Since the adaptive mechanism partially helps to overcome the local optimality problem, the probability of finding the near-optimum has been substantially improved. To evaluate the effectiveness of the developed design method, the present study applied it to the user interface design for a portable wireless communication radio.

• 한국자동차공학회논문집
• /
• 제11권4호
• /
• pp.180-188
• /
• 2003

The vehicle simulator is a useful virtual reality system. The simulator enables engineers to effectively research and analyze various experiments. Therefore, the development of a specific vehicle simulator is required, and its performance must be verified. This paper verifies the performance of Pusan National University Vehicle Simulator. Human sensibility ergonomic tests of vehicle simulator were also executed. The sense of simulator motion was chosen as the standard of performance evaluation. The driver's senses were subdivided into senses of rectilinear and rotational velocities. This study extracted ergonomic sensibility words that can be used to evaluate the performance of the simulator As a practical application of simulator, the relation was studied between the sense of simulator motion and the characteristics of drivers, who are classified into their sexes and driving careers. A statistical method was applied to human sensibility ergonomic tests of vehicle simulator.