Zeitschrift für Ergonomie
Offener Zugang

Abstrakt

Practical Approach towards Issue on Ergonomic Training With Respect to Productivity Improvement

Dhande KK

Shift workers of process industries always remain under heavy work pressure while working more efficiently for higher production. In modern work practices, process industries run 24 hours per day due to their process requirement, expensive machineries and to achieve production targets. The main aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence of shift work on sleep variables and the body parts affected by Musculoskeletal Disorders (MSDs). Moreover, it focused on how these problems (sleep and MSDs) affect workers’ productivity and absenteeism. For this study 15 different process industries had been selected. The detailed sleep assorted variables and work related musculoskeletal pain/discomfort had been analyzed in different activities with self administered questionnaire (SAQ). This questionnaire consists of 41 questions related to sleep problems, 38 questions related to MSDs and 17 questions related to absenteeism. Responded rate was 57.84%. The collected data was analyzed shift wise (morning, afternoon, night, general and ‘R’ shift). Intra and inter correlation among the different variables as well as correlation of each variables with absenteeism had been investigated before and after the ergonomic intervention programme (EIP). The results showed that averagely 26.93% workers had been found complaining of sleep problems and 30.36% of night shift workers had been spotted with the problem of MSDs. All sleep and MSDs assorted variables were significantly associated with shift work (p<0.05, p<0.01). The effect of EIP disclosed that the problems related to sleep and MSDs had been found reduced by 5.41% and 4.75% respectively and absenteeism due to sleep and MSDs by 0.93% and 0.83% respectively after EIP. As a result the improvement in worker’s productivity was sought out to be 1.622%.