• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.553-563
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• 2014

Objective: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of gender (male, female) and grip spans (45, 50, 60, 70, 80mm) on total grip strength, resultant force, finger force and subjective discomfort rating. Background: In order to prevent musculoskeletal disorders, studies of hand tools need to be preceded based on grip strength, finger force, and subjective discomfort rating. However, experimental apparatus using tools such as pliers that reflect the actual work place was almost non-existent. Method: Fifty-Two (26 males and 26 females) participants were recruited from the student population. In this study, a pair of revised pliers, which can change grip span from 45 to 80mm was applied to estimate total grip strength, resultant force and individual finger forces. All participants were asked to exert a maximum grip force with three repetitions, and to report the subjective discomfort rating for five grip spans of pliers (45, 50, 60, 70, 80mm). Results: There were significant differences of total grip strength, resultant force, individual finger forces and subjective discomfort rating according to grip span. The lowest total grip strength was obtained from the grip span of 80mm for both genders. For resultant force, the highest resultant force was exerted at grip spans of 50, 60 and 70mm for females and 50 and 60mm for males. The lowest subjective discomfort rating was observed in the 50mm for both genders. Conclusion: Based on the result, 50mm and 60mm grip spans which provide the highest force and lowest discomfort rating might be recommendable for the male and female pliers users. Application: The findings of this study can provide guidelines on designing a hand tool to help to reduce hand-related musculoskeletal disorders and obtain better performance.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.176-182
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• 2005

American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH) adopted the Lifting Threshold Limit Values ($TLVs^{(R)}$) in 2005 as a guideline for protecting the workers from work-related low back and shoulder disorders associated with repetitive lifting tasks. The TLVs consist of three tables with recommended weight limits for lifting tasks and their determination procedures are simple. The TLVs sans the material weight/the recommended values (LITLVs) were obtained from 45 lifting tasks in ship engine manufacturing factories. These values were compared and correlated with the Recommended Weight Limits (RWLs) and lifting indices (LIs) determined by the Revised Lifting Equation (LE) of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). The average ratio, LITLVs/LIs, was 0.8 (LITLVs: $1.3{\pm}0.8$, LIs: $1.6{\pm}0.7$). Thus, the TLVs underestimated the risk than the LE. The LITLVs were highly correlated with LIs (r=0.82). The predicted value of LITLVs when LIs=1 wa 0.76. Using the predicted TLVs the higher risk ones of a large number of tasks can be screened to be further investigated.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.165-170
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• 2012

Objective: The aim of this study is to develop new K-OWAS on the basis of the anthropometry of Koreans considering works in shipbuilding and heavy industry for evaluation whole-body working postures. Background: Work Related Musculoskeletal Disorders(WMSDs) were a leading cause of sick leaves and injuries in the industries of our country. Especially, awkward working postures and handling of heavy weight are known as a main cause of WMSDs. OWAS, RULA and REBA are much used as the method for evaluating the awkward working postures. OWAS is the working postures evaluation method that can be used for the evaluation of whole-body working postures. OWAS was the method made based on the anthropometry of the foreigner, working postures and weight does not fit our work state. Method: This method was evaluated considering the anthropometry of the Koreans, working postures and weight in shipbuilding and heavy industry work state in Korea. Results: Correlation of action level of OWAS and subjective discomfort for each body parts were not statistically significant($p{\geq}0.1$). But correlation of action level of K-OWAS and subjective discomfort for torso and waist were statistically significant($p{\leq}0.1$). Conclusion: K-OWAS was suitable in the evaluation of upper body including torso and waist. Application: New method for whole-body working postures from this study prevent WMSDs and help improvement of working environment and design of working method.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Industry Convergence
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.219-225
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• 2010

A structure of line for producing products is variously changing to be automatic and one-person Cell-Line considering the physical burden for workers in manufacturing industry of electronic goods. However, workers tend to still accuse Work-related Musculoskeletal Disorders (including shoulder, waist, hand, wrist, leg etc.) as a simply repeated work by accelerating of the production speed for productivity improvement in the assembly line. Thus manufacturing engineers in charge of changing and set up newly for an assembly line are necessary to the construct of the guideline on human engineering. Especially. There is no standardized engineering-guide and it is difficult to create the exact work environment because the risk factor analysis and the improvement for assembly line are executed once a year on the current situation. I'd like to reduce the physical burden on workers through the effective improvement of processing by the guideline on working environment fit for a characteristic on manufacturing process when the process is changed or newly installed.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.20 no.4 s.72
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• pp.148-153
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• 2005

Computer dominated jobs and industrial automation have rapidly created work-related musculoskeletal disorders(WMSDs) and WMSDS are expanding to employee of other general industry. Specific risk factors associated with WMSDs include repetitive motion, heavy lifting, forceful exertion, contact stress, vibration awkward posture and rapid hand and wrist movement. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of the neck muscle workload according to posture(joint angle) and load weight. Seven male students participated in this study. To analyze neck muscle workload was studied on electromyographic(EMG) activity for sternocleidomastoid and trapezius, was subjectively rated using a Borg's CR-10 scale. ANOVA showed that the CR-10 ratings and most EMG root-mean-square (RMS) value were statistically significant improvement according to posture(joint angle) and load weight. The results of this study indicate the joint angle and weight of neck muscle workload to provide safe working conditions. To reduce the large number and severity of WMSDs employees have been experiencing, we need to redesign the job in workplace to identify and control hazards that are reasonably likely to be causing or contributing to the WMSDs.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Industrial Safety Conference
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• 2002.11a
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• pp.235-238
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• 2002

작업관련성 근골격계질환(work-related musculoskeletal disorders)은 힘, 작업자세, 진동, 심리적 스트레스, 개인차 등 여러 가지의 신체적 작업 부하 요인에 의해 발생하는 것으로 알려져 있다. 이러한 요인 중 부적절한 작업자세가 근골격계질환의 주요한 발생요인으로 알려져 있는데, 2000년도 우리나라에서 업무상질병자로 인정된 작업관련성 근골격계질환자 중 부적절한 작업자세로 인한 질환자가 89%, 반복작업 63.7%, 무리한 힘 53%, 진동 6.6%, 신체접촉에 의한 질환자가 1.1%로 조사되었다. 특히 부적절한 작업자세 중 비트는 자세로 인한 질환자가 87.2%로 가장 많았으며, 신체부위별로도 허리부위 질환자 중 부적절한 작업자세로 인한 질환자가 83.6%로 가장 높은 것으로 나타났다.(중략)

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.106-112
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• 2007

국내외의 근골격계질환에 대한 현황과 자료를 검토하였다. 국내의 자료는 지난 수년간 대학 연구소에서 수행한 유해요인조사 및 예방사업 과정에서 수집된 자료들이다. 제조업에서 서비스업에 이르는 다양한 업종의 현황을 비교하였다. 외국의 자료와 비교할 때 가장 큰 특징은 국내의 근골격계질환 자료는 발생건수에서도 실제 생산형장에서의 현황보다 축소되어져 있지만, 전체 산업재해나 직업병에서의 비율로 볼 때도 매년 그 발생 비율이 불안정하게 등락함으로서 아직도 국내의 근골격계질환의 발생비율은 여전히 정확한 현황 파악이 되지 못하고 있는 것으로 평가된다. 국내외 자료를 비교 분석한 결과 국내의 근골격계질환 현황은 외국의 평균치와 비교하여 10배 이상 저평가 되어 있는 것으로 분석된다. 또한 업종별로 평균 유병율은 적게는 5%에서 많게는 10% 이상에 이르는 것으로 추정되어진다.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.77-86
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• 2004

Observational methods to evaluate postural load have an intrinsic week point that is the problem of reliability in observing postures subjectively, although they have been widely used in assessing risk factors of work-related musculoskeletal disorders in the industry. In this study, observational reliability was discussed based on reviewing several previous studies. Practical guidelines was presented to reduce the observational errors when using video recording for the assessment of risk factors. In addition, previous studies on observational reliability were summarized and analyzed according to body parts to be observed, media for observation, objective measures, analysis, statistics, etc. It is expected that this basic study can be used to increase the applicability and accuracy of the observational methods.

• Korean Journal of Computational Design and Engineering
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.68-79
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• 2014

Human model simulation has been widely used in various industrial areas such as ergonomic design, product evaluation and characteristic analysis of work-related musculoskeletal disorders. However, the process of building digital human models and capturing their behaviors requires many costly and time-consuming fabrication iterations. To overcome the limitations of this expensive and time-consuming process, many studies have recently presented a markerless motion capture approach that reconstructs the time-varying skeletal motions from optical devices. However, the drawback of the markerless motion capture approach is that the phenomenon of occlusion of motion data occurs in real-time human simulation. In this study, we propose a systematic method of discriminating missing or inaccurate motion data due to motion occlusion and interpolating a sequence of motion frames captured by a markerless depth camera.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.447-455
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• 1998

It is important to identify and evaluate poor working postures properly to prevent work-related musculoskeletal disorders. The purpose of this study is to develope a new upper body micropostural classification scheme for analyzing postural stress in industry. Most of the existing postural classification schemes were based either on the literature, or on simple biomechanical principles, or on a subjective ranking system. The scheme suggested in this study was based on perceived joint discomfort measured through experiment, in which nineteen subjects participated and the magnitude estimation method was employed to obtain subjects' joint discomfort. Also, the criteria for evaluating postural stress of working postures were presented for practitioners of health and safety to be able to redesign working methods and workplaces, which was based on maximum holding time by Miedema and other people. It is expected that the scheme developed in this study could be used as a valuable tool when evaluating working postures.