Postural hygiene in the workplace for making masapan crafts

Abstract

A worker may experience muscle aches or numbness in legs and fatigue after an eight-hour workday occupying a permanent posture for a long time. Taking into account minimum requirements for postural hygiene and ergonomics, we managed to avoid these discomforts without suffering health problems in the medium and long term. This study is part of a population of fifteen craftsmen who make masapan handicrafts in Calderón town in Ecuador. The process arises from a transformation of bread dough to a handmade dough more than 80 years ago, consisting of an ancestral art that needs quality from obtaining the dough to the artistic details of figures, where the craftsman makes his creations without realizing that is jetting a bad posture in the workplace. The research analyzes the operation of the manufacture of the glue that is carried out standing up, mixing the ingredients to obtain the dough and cooked until it gets a homogeneous consistency. It is a repetitive activity in each of the production cycles. The OWAS and RULA methods were applied to assess the risks produced by physical loads derived from the activities carried out and the global characterization of the postures, which were observed and classified in various possible combinations. The process is at level 3, that is, it requires the redesign of the task and increasing the active pauses. As a result, it was obtained that the risk category is level 2, the analyzed posture has the potential to cause damage to the musculoskeletal system.