Strength Capabilities and Subjective Limit of Repetitive Manual Insertion Task

• Main Author: Kamat, Seri Rahayu
• Format: Article
• Language: English; English
• Published: Scottish Journal of Arts, Social Sciences and Scientific Studies (SJASS). 2012
• Subjects: TS Manufactures; QP Physiology
• Online Access: http://eprints.utem.edu.my/id/eprint/6678/2/Strength_Capability_Limit.pdf; http://eprints.utem.edu.my/id/eprint/6678/4/Strength_Capability_Limit.docx; http://eprints.utem.edu.my/id/eprint/6678/

Manufacturing industry sector is one of industrializing parties that gives significant contribution in achieving the vision of 2020 in Malaysia. The ability of human works is compulsory in letting the industry to be successful in producing products. Unfortunately, many of painful afflictions of musculoskeletal system as Musculoskeletal Disorders (MSDs) are associated with the working posture. Ergonomic play an important role to give comfort ability to the workers who work at any manufacturing industry. Nowadays, there are so many companies that ignore about the ergonomic of their workers. They tend to push the worker to achieve the output of the company rather than think about comfort ability to the workers on the workstation. This project is conducted to investigate the subjective limit for repetitive manual handling tasks according to workstation area and body posture for workers and the pain or discomfort experienced by the workers while undertaken the task. Also the improvement of the body posture was made. The method used in this study included observation, questionnaire, company visit, interview and Rapid Upper Limb Assessment (RULA). RULA has been used in this study to assess the posture of the worker while handling the tasks before and after the improvement posture. After making the improvement, scores for body posture was reduced to the safe level. Keywords: Musculoskeletal Disorders, Workstation Design, Repetitive Manual Handling, Body Posture, Rapid Upper Limb Assessment