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Congress of the International Ergonomics Association

IEA 2018: Proceedings of the 20th Congress of the International Ergonomics Association (IEA 2018) pp 189–205Cite as

Towards an Age-Differentiated Assessment of Physical Work Strain

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Part of the book series: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing ((AISC,volume 826))

Abstract

Companies in different industries are all facing the same challenge: demographic change. This leads to a higher share of elderly workers in most workplaces. When designing workstations or evaluating risks at workplaces, it is necessary to take into account age-related changes in physical and sensory skills and in cognitive or mental capabilities. Although there is a lot of data available in literature concerning age-related changes in human performance prerequisites, only a few methods consider the factor age. For example, the REFA-method uses a factor considering age when calculation maximum forces. However most ergonomic standards and occupational risk assessment methods used in industry do not consider this data and the specific needs of an ageing workforce. The aim of this paper is to introduce a work evaluation framework which was developed based on literature and will be compared to practical findings from a field study conducted with a manufacturing company and a food retailer in Austria. Therefore, a three step approach was carried out: First the changes which humans experience when they get older were elaborated based on an extensive literature analysis and age-critical factors, that should be covered in ergonomic risk assessment methods, were derived. Second existing risk assessment methods that cover physical occupational risks were collated and examined, considering their coverage of age-relevant factors. Finally, all findings were combined to an age-differentiated workplace risk screening method. As a result, we developed a method that should allow to reveal existing problem-workplaces for elderly workers and point out the need for age-related adaption at them. Furthermore, it reveals existing age-appropriate workplaces, where workers should be able to work their whole working life.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Cp. Austrian skilled workforce radar: http://fk-monitoring.at/.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graz University of Technology, Rechbauerstrasse 12, 8010, Graz, Austria

    Matthias Wolf & Christian Ramsauer

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  1. Matthias Wolf
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  2. Christian Ramsauer
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Correspondence to Matthias Wolf .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of the Republic of San Marino, San Marino, San Marino

    Sebastiano Bagnara

  2. Centre for Clinical Risk Management and Patient Safety, Tuscany Region, Florence, Italy

    Riccardo Tartaglia

  3. Centre for Clinical Risk Management and Patient Safety, Tuscany Region, Florence, Italy

    Sara Albolino

  4. Fraunhofer FKIE, Bonn, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany

    Thomas Alexander

  5. International Ergonomics Association, Tokyo, Japan

    Yushi Fujita

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Wolf, M., Ramsauer, C. (2019). Towards an Age-Differentiated Assessment of Physical Work Strain. In: Bagnara, S., Tartaglia, R., Albolino, S., Alexander, T., Fujita, Y. (eds) Proceedings of the 20th Congress of the International Ergonomics Association (IEA 2018). IEA 2018. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 826. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96065-4_22

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