• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
• /
• v.27 no.1
• /
• pp.9-19
• /
• 2008

Work-related musculoskeletal hazards in a paper-making industry were examined to explore ergonomic interventions in a participatory approach for mitigating the hazards. Manual tasks occurred in this paper-making industry were quite different with ordinary assembly industry where individual workers perform certain specified tasks repetitively. Workers used to perform varieties of team-based irregular manual tasks to interact with the facilities. Among 96 manual jobs investigated, 44 potential hazardous jobs were screened during basic investigation phase and finally 16 hazardous jobs were identified by the detailed analysis phase. The major hazardous factors were awkward postures and excessive weights. Possible ways of intervention were developed, reviewed and proposed by an ergonomics team comprised of staffs and engineers from various departments and ergonomics specialist from outside the company. The proposed intervention ideas were evaluated and modified by the workers and union representatives in terms of usability and comfort. Implemented interventions including mechanization, automation, and improvement of tools and equipments provided fairly promising results.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
• /
• v.31 no.6
• /
• pp.793-800
• /
• 2012

Objective: This study investigated the problems that could be faced with when engineers try to improve the affective quality using the DMAIC model. Background: Affective quality is considered one of the most influential factors for the competitive power of consumer products and many engineers make effort to improve the affective quality. Since the Six Sigma process is effective and wide-used method for quality improvement, it can also be used to improve the affective quality. However six sigma tools cannot be directly used for affective quality because of the subjective and qualitative characteristics of the human affection. Method: Investigate the goals, processes and key factors of DMAIC model and find the difficulties to use six sigma tools for the affective quality. Results: Most of the problems arise from measuring and quantifying the human affective response level and understanding the relationship between the human affective factors. Conclusion: Both the protocol for measuring human affection and the monitoring system to find the affective response change for the product or service are required. Application: The results of this study could be helpful for the engineers not specialized in ergonomics to improve the affective quality in systematic approach.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
• /
• v.32 no.4
• /
• pp.303-308
• /
• 2013

Objective: The aim of this study is to understand health effect of hand-arm transmitted vibration. Background: Electronic vibration tools have been used in many industries. These tools evoke hand-arm transmitted vibration that cause hand-arm vibration syndrome. Method: Various papers on the hand-arm transmitted vibration and its health effects have been reviewed to know what health effect caused. Results: Hand-arm transmitted vibration causes circulatory, neural, musculoskeletal and other disturbance. Conclusion: The previous studies focused on the epidemiology and physiology for hand-arm transmitted vibration. So, now we should focus on a prevention and guideline of hand-arm transmitted vibration. Application: These results can be used to know health effect of hand-arm transmitted vibration.

• Proceedings of the ESK Conference
• /
• 2004.10a
• /
• pp.7-7
• /
• 2004

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
• /
• v.21 no.2
• /
• pp.13-23
• /
• 2002

Human dummies are essential tools in the development of such products as vehicle have been actively used not only in reach and view field tests. but also in impact perception evaluations. This study attempted to obtain geometric and dynamic model body segments from Korean anthropometric data. The investigation focused on the de both human and dummy for the geometric and inertial properties. The dynamic modeli being suggested is based on rigid body dynamics using fifteen individual body segments by joins. The segments are connected at the locations representing the physical joint body so that each segment has its mass and moment of inertia. For visual three-dimensional graphic was used for easier implementation of the dumn applications. For applications, proposed Korean dummies Were used in dynamic crash and driver's view and reach test modules were developed in virtual environment.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
• /
• v.36 no.5
• /
• pp.61-70
• /
• 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.

• Proceedings of the ESK Conference
• /
• 1995.10a
• /
• pp.280-284
• /
• 1995

The primary aim of this research is to summarize and discuss the problems that the hand tool manufactiuring industry of Korea is now facing. The study was performed mainly through the interviews with hand tool industry experts. Traditional design concepts are usually oriented towards the functionality of tools but often ignore the human factors such as ease of use, comfort, etc. As a result, for hand tools, mechanical and material aspects have been considerably enhanced but human factors have still much room for improvement.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
• /
• v.34 no.1
• /
• pp.45-62
• /
• 2015

Objective: The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of personality type on human performance tool compliance in nuclear power plants (NPPs) and to propose general recommendations for an enhancement of its practical utilization. Background: Various guidelines, regulating criteria, and recommendations have been developed to prevent human errors in NPPs. Despite these efforts, the accidents sometimes caused by human errors have steadily occurred, and therefore, various human performance tools have been adopted as countermeasures against human errors. The major and inevitable contributing factors among the many hazards to human errors might be the trait and personality, which are considered to be the inner world of humans. Thus, we try to investigate the utilization of human performance tools by considering the different types of operating crew personalities, and we suggested more practical recommendations to prevent human errors according to the personality. Method: We developed the Questionnaire using the Big 6 (HEXACO) models, which are human performance tools for workers in NPPs, and individual (condition) variables to investigate the effect of personality types on human performance tools. We slightly modified them to help the survey respondents understand them better. A survey was conducted for ordinary people over the age of 20. SPSS 22.0 was used to perform a correlation analysis and a hierarchical regression analysis to find the relationship between personality types and human performance tools. Results: The utilization of human performance tools shows significant differences statistically by personality. The correlation result reveals that the types of Honesty (H), Extraversion (X), Conscientiousness (C), and Openness to experience (O) show a higher utilization of human performance tools. In hierarchical regression results, human performance tools of task preview, questioning attitude, stopping when unsure, self-checking, effective communication, and place-keeping show a higher utilization with personality types. However, the Agreeableness (A) type did not show significant differences statistically with human performance tools. Conclusion: We tried to investigate the utilization of human performance tools by considering the different types of human personality and provide more practical recommendations to prevent human errors according to the personality. These results will be able to prevent human errors owing to the characteristics (advantages and disadvantages) of personality types. Application: This information can be utilized as guidelines for proactive recommendations according to the workers' personalities for more practical human performance tools to prevent human errors in an NPP.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
• /
• v.30 no.1
• /
• pp.19-28
• /
• 2011

Objective: The aim of this study is to reclassify human errors and to develop hands-on tools to apply the new classification for preventing human error accidents in highway construction site. Background: The main cause of accidents in highway construction was reported as the carelessness of workers. However, such diagnosis could not help us operationally prevent accidents in real workplace. Method: The accidents in highway construction were reanalyzed and the causes of human error were reclassified in order to educate and improve the awareness of human error in highway construction. Field survey and interview with safety managers and workers were conducted to find the causal relationship between the actual accidents and the human errors. Results: The most frequently observed human errors in highway construction were classified into six categories such as mis-perception, distraction, memory fail, slip, cognition error and mis-judgment. In order to provide hands-on tools to increase the awareness of human error in construction field, the human error checklist and card sorting diary were developed. Especially, the card sorting diary was designed to increase the ability in human error inspection of safety manager at construction site. Moreover, posters were developed based on actual accident cases. Conclusion: We suggested that the improved awareness and analytical report on checklist, card sorting diary and posters for construction field could collectively prevent the accident. Application: The classification of human error, hands-on tools and posters can be directly applicable on highway construction site. This analytical and collective approach preventing human error-related accident could be extended to other construction workplaces.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
• /
• v.29 no.4
• /
• pp.479-486
• /
• 2010

Automobile-related industries have been a few of leading ones among domestic industries reporting high rates of musculoskeletal disorders (WMSD's). In this paper, major ergonomic aspects of automobile-related works were reviewed with reference to WMSD's. According to the result, high repeatability of works with as short as 1 minute or less, awkward postures required, excessive forces, and vibrations due to power tools were drawn out as major physical factors. To eliminate or mitigate those factors - at least in automobile-related industries - ergonomic approach has tried for more than a decade. With all, however, ergonomists still seem to confront with several problems to be solved such as development of appropriate assessment tools, enhancement of work improvement activities, system establishment for continuous prevention and management of WMSD's. As lots of previous researches declared, it was concluded that ergonomic approach would collaborate with other approaches such as ndustrial medicine considering physical factors as well as psychosocial factors, and that the necessity of an integrated Occupational Safety and Health Management System(OHSMS) was mentioned.