Human Factors and Ergonomics

There is high prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders and fall injuries among employees in work vehicle environments, yet little attention is given to understanding why. Effective ergonomic interventions can lower the physical demands of work tasks, thereby lowering the incidence and severity of associated MSDs. Reducing injury related costs alone make ergonomic interventions a useful tool for improving a company’s productivity and overall business competitiveness. Preventing injuries by improving access to objects stored in a vehicle requires rethinking...

The recently revised ACGIH TLV for Hand Activity (TLV₂₀₁₈) is a widely used tool for assessing risk for upper limb musculoskeletal disorders.This webinar will explore findings from an analysis comparing the strength of the exposure-response relationships between the TLV₂₀₁₈ and carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) between men and women and across age strata. Heterogeneity of the effect size by sex or age would be important to specialists using the method for prevention of CTS among working populations.

Cleaning activities are typically not the primary business line of the organizations they serve. These services are often contracted out, which can lead to working conditions being overlooked. This webinar will explore workload issues among commercial janitors and custodial staff. Learners will also discuss the development of a workload calculator designed for managers and work schedule planners of commercial janitorial firms to better allocate workers, manage the workload of custodial staff, and to improve working conditions.

Many ergonomic evaluation and risk assessment tools have been around for decades, and were designed to evaluate single or mono-task work. In practice, there are few single-task jobs. Most work is multi-task, exposing the worker to ergonomic risk factors of different levels (i.e., forces of different magnitude, postures of different severity, etc.). This presentation will review a timeline of the evolution of ergonomic assessment tools, and describe how tools are rapidly transitioning from single-task to multi-task models. Newer multi-task models such...