An Evaluation of Manual Meterial Handling Tasks in a Manufacturing Company

Manual material handling (MMH) is one of the most common causes of accidents and ill-health in the workplace. Material handling encompasses a wide range of work activities - from occasional movement of very large loads with cranes and powered industrial trucks to routine, repetitive lifting of relatively light objects and tasks that are incidental to a worker's regular, daily activities. Manual material handling tasks in a Philippine manufacturer (the Company) of Baby Diapers and other personal products were evaluated and analyzed. Five months worth of data from the Company showed that 7% of workers suffer from work-related musculo-skeletal injuries. Of these, 58% are classified as low back pain. It should be noted that most Philippine companies are notorious for under-reporting workplace related injuries, particular those that only cause loss of man-hours (as opposed to losing man-days or months) due to relatively lax regulations though the Company encourages employees to report these types of injuries. The manufacturing line for Product H (a baby diaper) was analyzed using ergonomic checklists for general posture, task evaluation, and workstation evaluation, as well as a Cumulative Trauma Disorder (CTD) Risk Index. It was seen that bulk packing, auto-bagging, manual sealing and box stacking are the most problematic among the tasks. Poorly designed workstations as well as heavy manual lifting and moving tasks contributed as likely main causes for low back pain. Proposed solutions included an improved layout for the manual packing, auto-bagging and bulk packing workstations, job redesign of the on-line inspector, as well as job rotation among the different product lines.