Biomechanical and Virtual Analysis for Hand Reach in a Manual Sorting Task

Abstract

Today's workplaces are transforming rapidly with the accelerating changes and developments in technology. Along with this the daily life of blue collar and white collar workers of industries are changing completely. Though there are improvements in the organizations, the condition of the work and the working environment of many workers remain laborious. This leads to an increase in accidents and health issues of the workers. It is utmost important and legitimate expectations of workers to address the health issues emerging out of their employment. Though there is an increasing amount of manual work being done by the machines, most of the Indian micro, small and medium enterprises are opting for manual labor for their industrial operations involving heavy physical and mental stress. Over time, the phase of technological change is greater than the worker's ability to adopt it both physically and mentally. Among the working people, most of the common illnesses results from people-work relationships. In this paper, the working positions and visual conditions of people in the workplace. The basic fact is that the people are different in their heights, ability to withstand physical and mental stress are different and this is the basis in designing the proper tools. The equipment and machinery should be designed properly for the use of people. The poor designs will cause people with lower back pain, muscle and joint pains. The objective of the paper is to estimate the physical and mental workload of workers in manual sorting jobs. In this work, two factors are considered, one is the height of the worktable and second one is the width of the pallet. A total of three scenarios are observed. The data obtained is analyzed with SPSS software and ANOVA is performed. The methodology and results are explained in the paper.