ERGONOMIC RISK ASSESSMENT IMPLEMENTATION IN A TEXTILE COMPANY

Abstract

As a result of the ergonomic inadequacy of the working environment, the probability of employees getting musculoskeletal diseases increases. Musculoskeletal diseases constitute an important part of occupational diseases. Once musculoskeletal diseases occur, their treatment is time-consuming and costly; also leads to operator absenteeism. Therefore, businesses should keep the ergonomic risk level in the working environment below a certain acceptable level in order to increase productivity by using human resources efficiently. Various ergonomic risk assessment techniques are used in the literature to determine this acceptable risk level. These techniques are basically based on the analyst examining the posture positions of the body parts of the operator during the job and evaluating it with a classification. In this study, REBA, NIOSH and OCRA techniques are used in order to determine ergonomic risk factors in a textile company. The reason for using these three different risk assessment techniques is that the body parts analyzed by each technique are different. Thus, the ergonomic strain level of the employee can be determined holistically. As a result of the study, it is determined that the employee is working under unfavorable ergonomic conditions. In order to prevent future musculoskeletal diseases in employees, as well as labor and productivity losses in the firm, the importance of making immediate arrangements in the working environment has been explained, and some solution recommendations have been offered.