An ergonomic system for assessing postural stress in workplaces.

A new method has been developed to enable the ergonomic assessment of stress associated with posture at the workplace. It enables evaluations of the load resulting from working postures at workplaces where standing and walking postures dominate. The method also offers the possibility of estimating the preexisting load already at the stage of workplace designing. This may prove useful in evaluating both the global load and giving the designer an idea about the effect of individual design decisions on changes of the postural load. The method has been used to compare the postural stress at several workplaces in the textile industry and it seems to perform satisfactorily.