Abstract
The purpose of this study is to expand the existing easy-to-follow ergonomics checklist aiming at raising its proper rate。Work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) is a serious industrial safety and health problem. To eliminating and reducing WMSDs，the early approach was to call ergonomics experts to improve the work methods and workplaces in the field for those at risk. But, because the amount of the experts is limited and therefore cannot fulfill the need of all-inclusive practice for industry, as a consequence, ease-to-follow ergonomics checklists (easy checklists) appeared。Easy checklists is a collection of drawings which depict the hazardous work scenarios and its improvement ideas, so as to enable the workers to recognize and identify the risks embedded in its work and workplaces and its improvements with the easy-to-understand drawings。Because of the prerequisite of easiness, the exixting easy checklist contains only 26 hazardous scenarios， therefore its proper rate is approximately 60%。 Now, the Act of Repetitive work musculoskeletal disorders prevention (OHSAct 6.2.1) has passed，all-inclusive practice of ergonomics improvement is needed，therefore, the purposed of this study is to expand the existing easy checklist， hoping its proper rate can be raised to 75%。 The study method consists of the collecting of hazardous scenarios and the categorizing of hazardous scenarios. The sources of hazardous scenarios were the 1014 improvement cases in the past 5 years in Taiwan, and the cases presented in some foreign ergonomics guidelines。The categorizing of hazardous scenarios consists of 3 stages: initial categorizing, advance categorizing, and selecting typical model. Initial categorizing was to sort all scenarios into 5 categories: namely awkward working posture, force over exertion, repetitive movement, vibration, and tissue compression. Advance categorizing was to further divided each categories into finer sub-divisions, e.g. awkward working posture was sub-divided into trunk flexion, neck extension and squat and stoop and etc. based on ergonomics principle. The selecting typical model was to select 1 or 2 typical scenarios out of a few proper ones from each sub-division. The expanded easy checklist consists of 71 hazardous scenarios, and the proper rate is raised to 88%。The checklist consists of 21 awkward working posture, 20 force over exertion, 17 repetitive motion, 9 vibration, and 4 tissue compression scenarios. A test of this checklist on 157 improved cases of a previous study resulted in a proper rate of 88%. With such a high rate of easy checklist, it is very helpful in guiding the worker to conduct self-implementation of ergonomic improvement.