A Preliminary Study of Body Discomforts of Hand Lay-up Process Workers in Composite Manufacturing

Abstract

Low Back Pain (LBP) is one of the chronic diseases that have been correlated with musculoskeletal disorder or occupational disease when the process of manufacturing involves manual processes. Composite manufacturing especially requires skilled workers that can complete manual task primarily hand lay-up process in conjunction with composite fabrication methods. Lay-up process is one of the methods in fabricating composite. Mostly, parts of products using composite are enormous; such aircraft body, pools and ship body. This study aims to segregate potential respondents for ergonomics experimental specifically focusing on hand lay-up workers in a composite manufacturing facility. The study uses survey for 28 participants to identify the workers experience on the body discomfort while doing lay-up process activity. Out of sixteen activities in the lay-up process, results show that nine activities are suitable for postural analysis. However, for the preliminary study, only three selected postures which are the most frequent are analyzed. Rapid Upper Limb Analysis (RULA) in Computer-Aided Three-Dimensional Interactive Application (CATIA) V521 software shows RULA score that is above than 5. Hence, the study recommended that the experimentation stage will cover on body parts in upper and lower back of workers. Thus, the respondents for the next step of the research is determined based on their (Body Mass Index) BMI and experience on body discomforts that were obtained from the surveys.