Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
JOURNAL OF THE FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND ARCHITECTURE OF GAZI UNIVERSITY, cilt.32, sa.3, ss.777-793, 2017 (SCI-Expanded)
Musculoskeletal Disorders (MSD) in employees, which can be seen as work-related pain, restriction of movement and disabilities and primarily affect the muscles, tendons, soft tissues such as ligaments and disks, are regarded as work-related MSD. There are various methods for assessing ergonomic risks for work-related MSD, yet practitioners still face many problems while conducting these assessments. Occupational safety specialists working in the companies fall hesitant in many areas and have difficulty in diverse topics ranging from method selection, observation, analysis to interpretation while conducting risk exposure assessment studies due to a lack of systematic ergonomic risk assessment approach. In this study, an integrated and systematic approach is developed including both reactive and proactive perspectives in order to support managing ergonomic risk assessment process more easily and accurately. The developed approach consists of four overlapping phases; awareness activities, work analysis, exposure assessment and reporting. The approach is applied in a company operating in metal sector. In this application, ergonomic risk factors in the company's machining department are identified using reactive and proactive perspectives, ergonomic risk exposure levels of all the operations are found and priority action areas are identified. Based on the information obtained with the application of the systematic approach developed in this study, suggestions for future work are given.