Analysis of multiple activity manual materials handling tasks using A Guide to Manual Materials Handling

Manual handling of materials continues to be a hazardous activity, leading to a very significant number of severe overexertion injuries. Designing job s that are within the physical capabilities of workers is one approach ergo nomists have adopted to redress this problem. As a result, several job desi gn procedures have been developed over the years. However, these procedures are limited to designing or evaluating only pure lifting jobs or only the lifting aspect of a materials handling job. This paper describes a general procedure that may be used to design or analyse materials handling jobs tha t involve several different kinds of activities (e.g. lifting, lowering, ca rrying, pushing, etc). The job design/analysis procedure utilizes an elemen tal approach (breaking the job into elements) and relies on databases provi ded in A Guide to Manual Materials Handling to compute associated risk fact ors. The use of the procedure is demonstrated with the help of two case stu dies.