Ergonomic assessment and workstation design in a furniture manufacturing industry—a case study

Abstract

Ergonomics plays an important role to improve health, safety and productivity at workplaces. Faced with the increasing incidence of Work-related Musculoskeletal Disorders (WMSD), the manufacturing industries had taken multiple initiatives to redesign their workplaces based on ergonomic criteria. In this context, the current study has been carried out in a frame assembly workstation of a large Portuguese site of furniture manufacturing where most of workers were continuously exposed to WMSD risk factors (e.g. repetitive manual tasks and awkward postures) and suffering from some kind of musculoskeletal complaints. The main objective of the current study was to improve the ergonomic conditions of the referred assembly workstation. Based on anthropometric data of Portuguese adult population, an ergonomic assessment of a workstation redesign was developed. To verify the suitability of the redesign, Rapid Upper Limb Assessment (RULA) for both workstations, existing and modified, was applied. The results showed that the ergonomic interventions are essential to reduce the mismatch between workers and workstations physical conditions, contributing to the postural correction and, consequently, to the WMSD prevention.