Course: Ergonomics

Topic: Anthropometry and Manual Material Handling

1. Write a report that explains to a design engineer why anthropometric data should be used in the design of humanmachine systems. Give examples from your working environment to support your arguments.

2. Mrs. Smith is on holiday in Sri Lanka with her husband. She persuades him to buy her a new dress in a local village market. She is horrified to discover that all of the dresses on sale are too small for her around the hips. She has always considered herself to be fairly slim. Her hip breadth is 335 mm. Assume that the dresses are designed to fit local females and use Figure 3.4 and the data in Table 3.3 to answer the following questions:

Is Mrs. Smith justified in considering herself to be fairly slim?

Why wont any of the dresses fit her?

3. How does work capability vary with gender and age?

4. What limits endurance in a whole-body manual task?

5. Before recent automotive design changes, it was not unusual to have to lean forward and extend the arms while placing an object into the trunk of a car. Assume the occupant lifts a 24-lb box from the ground into a trunk. Being lazy, the occupant simply twists 45 to pick up the box from the ground level (V = 0) at a short horizontal distance (H ~ 10 in). The vertical travel distance is the difference between the vertical location of the box at the destination (assume the bottom of the trunk is 20 in from the ground) and the vertical location of the box at the origin (V = 0), yielding D = 20. Assume that this is a one-time lift; therefore, FM = 1. Also, assume that the box is fairly small and compact, but has no handles. Thus, coupling is poor with CM = 0.90.

6. In the packing department, a worker stands sideways between the end of a conveyor and a pallet. The surface of the conveyor is 40 in from the floor, and the top of the pallet is 6 in from the floor. As a box moves to the end of the conveyor, the worker twists 90 to pick up the box, then twists 180 in the opposite direction and sets the box down on the pallet. Each box is 12 in on a side and weighs 25 lb. Assume the worker moves five boxes per minute for an 8-h shift and a horizontal distance of 12 in. Using the NIOSH lifting equation, calculate RWL and LI. Redesign the task to improve it. What are the RWL and LI now?

7. Conduct an assessment in your company to identify some problems and concerns with manual material handling. As a future Industrial engineer, what contributions or ideas would you like to propose to minimize or reduce problems in manual material handling? Illustrate and discuss your answer.

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