• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.34 no.2
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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.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.9-19
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• 2009

Repetitive movement, inadequate working posture, overuse of force, physical contact with sharp edge, vibration and temperature were well known risk factors of WMSDs (Work-related Musculoskeletal Disorders). Many researchers have investigated the relationship between inadequate working postures and incidences of WMSDs of the upper extremities, whereas relatively few researchers have tried to evaluate workload associated with the lower-body postures. The effects of lower-limb postures including various knee flexion angles on the subjective discomfort, heart rate and EMG of lower-limb muscles were investigated in this study. Thirty graduate students were asked to maintain thirteen different body postures, and heart rate and EMG data of five muscle groups (electro spine, biceps femoris, vastus medialis, gastrocnemius and tibialis anterior) from each posture were collected during fifteen minutes sustaining tasks. All participants were also asked to report their discomfort ratings of body parts. Results showed that high subjective discomfort ratings and heart rates were reported at the postures of knee angles of $60^{\circ}$ and $90^{\circ}$, whereas low discomfort ratings were founded at the postures of chair heights with 20cm, 40cm, and sitting with crossed legged. The change of median frequency for each muscle group during fifteen minutes tasks was investigated for each body posture to evaluate the relationship between muscle fatigue and body posture. It was found that the trends of changes of median frequency were different based on muscle group as well as lower-limb body posture from this study.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.49-57
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• 2011

A questionnaire study was carried out to understand the status of performing the risk assessment of work-related musculoskeletal disorders(WMDSs), which is the employers' legal responsibility when the employees are involved in doing tasks with risk factors. Employers or managers from 340 companies and the representative employees from 250 companies participated in the survey. According to the participated employers and employees, 35.0~46.2% of companies had performed the first risk assessment before the end of 2005. However, it is presumed that the real condition might not be as much as the result, because most companies were very reluctant to took part in the survey. It was found that the type of business and size of the company are the main factors affecting the performance of the risk assessment in terms of the performing ratio, method, and so on. The participants were positive in the thought that the assessment would be helpful in preventing msuculoskeletal disorders, while there was a little difference between the employers and employees in the thought that the assessment would be helpful in finding the injuries in the early stage. It was found that it is necessary to modify and improve the definition and criteria of the tasks to be examined in the assessment.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.119-124
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• 2008

Many automobile assembly workers often do several cycles of tasks continuously, i.e., without breaks, to get a longer break. This is not recommended since the dose of fatigue increases exponetially with time and it takes much longer time to recover. In this study, a laboratory experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of work/rest schedules on workload of a repetitive upper-limb task. Eleven male subjects participated in the experiment, in which simulated screw driving tasks were carried out repetitively with 3 different work/rest schedules: standard breaks(1 cycle of work at a time, 60 20-s breaks), medium breaks(5 cycles of work at a time, 12 100-s breaks), and long breaks(10 cycles of work at a time, 6 200-s breaks). The result showed that medium- and long-breaks schedules significantly increased the level of perceived discomfort and %HRR as compared to the standard-break schedule. The subjects' preference was not statistically different among work/rest schedules, which might be caused from the absolutely low level of workload of the experimental tasks. From the results, it is recommended to have frequent and shorter breaks rather than infrequent and longer breaks to decrease the level of physical workload. A more expanded studies, however, should be carried out to provide more practical safety guidelines on the work practice of continuous working without breaks among automobile assembly workers.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.35-44
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• 2007

Work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) are a major problem in industries in which manual materials handling is performed by workers. To prevent these WMSDs, it is necessary to understand the muscular strength capability and use this knowledge to design job and selection and assignment of workers. Even though two-hands lifting activity of manual materials handling tasks are prevalent at the industrial site, many manual materials handling tasks which require the worker to perform one-hand lifting are also very common at the industrial site and forestry and farming. However, a few researches have been done for one-hand lifting activity of manual materials handling tasks. The objective of this study is to compare one-hand and two-hands lifting strength in terms of static and dynamic strength of the lifting activity for the ranging from the height of knuckle to elbow. It is shown in this study that the isometric lifting strength of one-hand is ranging from 54.7 to 63.3% of the one of two-hands. However, it is found that there is no significant difference between a person's isometric lifting strength for left-hand and right-hand. It is also shown that there is no significant difference between the peak force under the dynamic sub-maximal loading with one-hand and two-hands lifting activity. Similar results were obtained for the peak acceleration and peak velocity under the dynamic sub-maximal loading with one-hand and two-hands lifting activity. Isometric lifting strength at the height of knuckle was ranging from 2 to 3 times of the dynamic peak force during sub-maximal lifting. It is concluded that the dynamic peak forces under the sub-maximal loading are not highly correlated with the isometric lifting strength in similar postures.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.183-192
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• 2006

Predicting energy expenditure (EE) is important to prevent work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs). The problem to predict EE is that the standard of EE is based on western data. The authors checked average EE by job categories to provide basic data for suggesting proper work intensity for Korean workers. This study was conducted from 2003 to 2005. Study subjects were recruited from 4 car parts assembly plant, 2 car assembly plant, 2 Heavy machine manufacturing plant and 2 shipyards. Total study subjects were 515 male workers. To estimate VO2max, sub-maximal test was conducted to measure VO275%max by bicycle ergometer (Combi Co, Aerobike 75XL II). Heartbeats were recorded with heartbeat recorder (Polar Electro Co, Finland, S810) during work. EE of work was calculated by recorded heartbeat and individual regression equation which was derived from sub-maximal test. Subjects were classified into 4 industry and 8 work posture, 23 job task categories. Mean EEs (S.D.) according to industry classification (kcal/min) were 4.9 (0.7), 4.8 (0.7), 4.9 (0.7), 5.0 (0.9), and 4.0 (0.5) for Car Part manufacture, Car Assembly, Ship Building, Heavy Machinery Manufacture, and Hospital Office, respectively. The results suggest that Korean male workers of exceeding to the NIOSH criteria will be needed to plan for job rescheduling to maintain $worker^{\circ}$Øs health. Further study to establish Korean work intensity standard would be needed.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.48-59
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• 1999

Objectives. This study was conducted to evaluate the association between upper extremity musculoskeletal symptoms and Rapid Upper Limb Assessment(RULA) in vehicle assembly line workers. The goal of this study is to show the feasibility of RULA as a checklist for work related musculoskeletal symptoms (WMSDs) in Korean workers. Methods. The total number of 199 people from the department of assembly and 115 people from the department of Quality Control(QC) in automotive plant were subjects for this cross sectional study. A standard symptom questionnaire survey has been used for the individual characteristics, work history, musculosketal symptoms and non-occupational covariates. The data were obtained by applying one-on-one interview for the all subjects. RULA has been applied for ergonomic work posture analysis and the primary ergonomic risk sure was computed by RULA method. Association between upper extremity musculoskeletal symptoms and RULA were assessed by multiple logistic regression analysis. Results. A total of 314 workers was examined. The prevalence of musculoskeletal symptoms by NIOSH case definition was 62.4%. The distribution of musculoskeletal symptoms by the part of the body turned out to be following; back:41.4%, neck: 32.8%, shoulder: 26.4%, arm: 10.5% and hand:29.3%. The relationship of the individual RULA scores were statistically significant for the prevalence of musculoskeletal symptoms. As the result of the multiple logistic regressioin analysis, grand final score (OR=2.250 95% CI: 1.402-3.612) was associated with musculoskeletal symptoms in any part of the body.; upper arm score(OR=1.786 95% CI: 1.036-3.079) and posture score A(OR=1.634 95% CI: 1.016-2.626) in neck; muscel use score(OR=3.076 95% CI:1.782-5.310) and posture score A(OR=1.798 95% CI: 1.072-3.017) in shoulder; upper arm score(OR=1.715 95% CI: 1.083-2.715) and muscel use score(OR=2.057 95% CI:1.303-3.248) in neck & shoulder; muscle use score(OR=10.662 95% CI: 3.180-35.742) in arm; writst/wist score(OR=2.068 95% CI: 1.130-3.786) and muscle use score(OR=2.215 95% CI: 1.284-3.819) in hand & wrist.; muscle use score of trunk (OR=2.601 95% CI: 1.147-5.901) in back. Conclusions. Musculoskeletal symptoms of the extremities were strongly associated with individual RULA body score. These results show that RULA can be used as a useful assessment tool for the evaluation of musculoskeletal loading which is known to contribute to work-related musculoskeletal disorders. RULA also can be used as a screening tool or incorporated into a wider ergonomic assessment of epidemiological, physical, mental, environmental and organizational factors. As shown in this study, complement of the analysis system for the other risk factors and characterizing between the upper limb and back part will be needed for future work.

• Journal of the Korea Society for Simulation
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.93-101
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• 2006

Recently, work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) become a hot issue in the industrial fields. To prevent the potential risk of workers, various approaches have been adopted. One of the approaches is to improve the design of product, that of jig (or fixture) and that of workstation in the early stage of the development. 3D simulation technology is known as the powerful method for detecting such problems before constructing the workstation, because it is possible to evaluate the posture of worker using 3D models in a cyber space. It enables to find the unexpected problems and save the time and cost for redesign and rework. This paper introduces a 3D simulation case study of workers in an excavator factory. 3D models of products, jigs were developed with CATIA. The assembly processes were animated in IGRIP and DPM. Finally the various postures of worker were simulated using Human. As a result, some postures were analysed as the risky jobs and the result of simulation was used to improve the system.