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Comparisons of Three Observational Ergonomic Tools for Risk Assessment on Upper Extremities in a Pump Assembly Plant – A Pilot Study

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Advances in Social and Occupational Ergonomics (AHFE 2019)

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Abstract

The purpose of this study was to compare the agreement of three risk assessment tools for WMSDs, KIM-MHO, OCRA Index, and RSI, on upper extremities. Three raters were recruited to evaluate the risks of 30 repetitive pump assembly jobs based on job characteristics. The highest intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) of risk scores was 0.6 (95% CI: 0.39–0.76) when using OCRA Index. Pearson’s Correlation coefficient on the averaged risk score between KIM-MHO and RSI was high (r = 0.893, p < 0.01). The highest weighted-kappa coefficient of risk category between KIM-MHO and OCRA index was 0.21, which was a little low. The possible reason may be the definition of “risk” and the cut-off values used by each assessment tools. In conclusion, KIM-MHO is a recommended screen tool to assess the WMSDs risk on the upper extremities because of easy to use and less time consuming.

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Acknowledgements

This study is an undergraduate student research grants supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan (MOST 107-2813-C-039-028-E) and China Medical University, Taiwan (CMU 107-SR-23).

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Correspondence to Ei-wen Lo .

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Ho, MC., Lo, Ew. (2020). Comparisons of Three Observational Ergonomic Tools for Risk Assessment on Upper Extremities in a Pump Assembly Plant – A Pilot Study. In: Goossens, R., Murata, A. (eds) Advances in Social and Occupational Ergonomics. AHFE 2019. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 970. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20145-6_30

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20145-6_30

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