Good materials handling operations require good use of ergonomics, and a large variety of materials handling equipment is available to provide the proper ergonomics needed by industry workers. Proper use of ergonomics can prevent absenteeism, increase productivity, and eliminate much of the twisting, bending and repetitive lifting that accounts for most of the industrial accidents today in the materials handling industry. This chapter describes a problem in this area for which a research-based investigation is proposed.
Repetitive motion injuries and lifting injuries account for approximately three-quarters of all job-related illnesses in the United States. Materials handling is associated with both repetitive motion and lifting. Education, new equipment, facility design improvements, and job re-design all can help employees avoid injuries. The combination of all of these activities represents and ergonomic approach to management of work-place safety. The issue confronting government, industry, workers, and society is how best to assure that ergonomically sound and timely innovations are implemented.
While the materials handling problems associated with ergonomics are being recognized increasingly, the approach to addressing these issues by industries and companies is far from uniform. Even the issue of the primary impetus for the development of appropriate responses to ergonomic-related materials handling problems is disputed. The two major camps on this latter question tend to part ways on the question of whether such motivation should be provided by official government action or whether decisions about whether and how to respond to materials handling problems should be left to the discretion of industries and individual companies. It is this dispute that will be investigated in the proposed research study. The research question that will be investigated in the proposed study is as follows: Will the most effective...