• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.22 no.50
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• pp.65-73
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• 1999

Most psychophysical studies in manual material handling (MMH) have paid more attention to two-handed MMH activities than to one-handed MMH activities. Also, studies are involved only with single MMH activities - lifting, lowering, carrying, holding, pushing or pulling. Very few studies are reported on the determination of workers' capacities for combinations of one-handed MMH activities (lifting a box, then carrying the box, and lowering the box). The objective of this study was to find the psychophysical and physiological responses of human subjects from a simulated industrial task involving one-handed and two-handed combined tasks. The capacities that were determined as the maximum acceptable weight workloads for 1 hr work period for one-handed and two-handed combined tasks - lifting a box from floor to knuckle height, carrying the box for 4.3 m, and lowering the box from knuckle to floor height - were determined psychophysically under three frequencies: six handlings per minute, one handling per minute and one handling per five minutes. In addition to maximum acceptable weight, heart rate and RPE values on wholebody, back, and arm were also measured as responses.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.96-100
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• 2012

Low back pain (LBP) is a major issue in modern industrialized society which is mainly caused by manual material handling (MMH) tasks. The objective of this study was to provide scientific data for establishing work standard for Korean workers throughout the laboratory experiment including some specific lifting tasks. Thirty male college students were recruited as participants. The maximum voluntary contraction (MVC), recommended weight limit (RWL), and psychophysical safety weight using Borg's CR-10 scale were studied. Results showed that the RWL was 8.4% MVC higher than the proposed psychophysical safety weight. Based on this result, it is suggested that the NIOSH lifting equation (NLE) should not be directly applied to Korean without reasonable modifications. The ratio of psychophysical safety weight to MVC was ranged from 20.1 to 26.4%. It is expected that use of the methodology in this study may provide better expectation of the work ability of Korean for reducing lower back pains caused by MMH.

• Proceedings of the ESK Conference
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• 1997.04a
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• pp.95-99
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• 1997

Most studies in manual material handling (MMH) have paid more attention to single MMH activities-lifting, lowering, carrying, holding, pushing or pulling and have ignored combined activities. Also, many studies have been involved with two-handed MMH activities rather than to one-handed MMH activities. Very few studies are reported on the determination of workers' capacities for combinations of one-handed MMH activities (e.g. lifting a box, then carrying the box, and lowering the box). The objective of this study was to utilize the psychophysical approach to examine the combinations of lifting, carrying and lowering activities from a simulated industrial task involving one- handed and two-handed combined tasks and to develop mathematical models for combined tasks. Ten male students served as subjects for the study. The capacities that were determined as the maximum acceptable weight workloads for 1 hr work period for one-handed and two-handed combined tasks-lifting a box from floor to knuckle height, carrying the box for 4.3 m, and lowering the box form knuckle to floor height -were determined psychophysically under three frequencies: six handlings per minute, one handling per minute and one handling per five minutes. Combined MMH capacities models for one-handed tasks were developed. Te advantages and disadvantages of different models are discussed.

• Proceedings of the ESK Conference
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• 2004.10a
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• pp.26-26
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• 2004

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.58-70
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• 2017

The planning for material lifting operations is one of the key processes in high-rise building construction. Several previous studies have used rough calculations by referring to existing practices or establishing a target value for lifting cycle time or operating rate. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to propose a material lifting process optimization method for reducing the lifting cycle time and increasing the operating rate. In this study, we improve the cyclic operation network (CYCLONE) modeling method that considers the duration and zone information of each work task. This method can be used to hand over work tasks to another crew group in the work process. According to this methodology, this study optimizes the material lifting process, performs a sensitivity analysis, and evaluates the field applicability of the proposed material lifting process optimization method. Therefore, the optimized process was then applied to a high-rise building construction site. The lifting work process time and operating rate for the simulated as - is lifting process data, optimized process data, and field application result data were compared for each lifting height. From this comparison, the effectiveness of the optimization methodology was confirmed.

• Journal of agricultural medicine and community health
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• v.44 no.3
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• pp.138-143
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• 2019

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to assess the ergonomic risk factors in beekeeping, and to evaluate the effectiveness of assistive device hive lift. Methods: This study included 30 subjects of beekeeper in Pocheon, Korea. We assessed the ergonomic risk of main task in beekeeping with NLE, OWAS and evaluate the effectiveness of hive lift. We also surveyed prevalence of musculoskeletal symptoms among the subjects based on the Korea Working Condition Survey. Results: Moving to different floral origin, internal inspection of beehives, feeding syrup is the most burdensome to musculoskeletal system (NLE LI value=2~3. OWAS action category=4). The prevalence of musculoskeletal symptoms (lower and upper extremities) among the subjects was over 80 %. The introduction of assistive devices in the three hazardous tasks has dramatically reduced the risk by removing manual lifting hives (OWAS action category<1). Conclusions: Beekeeping is a heavy workload on the musculoskeletal system because it has a lot of manual lifting task. As a result of applying the hive lift, the burden could be reduced.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.104-113
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• 2005

A variety of ergonomic assessment methods of lifting tasks known as a major cause of work-related lower back pain have been used. But there is a limited information in choosing the most appropriate assessment method for a particular job and in finding out strengths and weakness of the methods. The purpose of this study was to assess and compare the ergonomic risks of lifting tasks in a marine diesel engine production industry by three lifting ergonomic assessment tools widely used: the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health(NIOSH) Revised Lifting Equation(NLE), the Washington Administrative Code 296-62-0517(WAC), and the Snook Tables. Lifting index(weight of load/Recommended Weight Limit) of NLE($LI_{NLE}$) was above 1 at 34 tasks(75.6%) of a total number of 45 lifting tasks. LI of WAC($LI_{WAC}$) was above 1 at 11 tasks(24.4 %). LI of Snook Table($LI_{Snook}$) was above 1 at 29 tasks(64.4%). Thus, LI was high in orders of $LI_{NLE}$ > $LI_{Snook}$ > $LI_{WAC}$. There were significantly high correlations among three Lls(p<0.01). The correlation coefficients between $LI_{NLE}$and the other three Lls($LI_{WAC}$ and $LI_{Snook}$) were r=0.93 and r=0.88, respectively. The linear regression equations were y = 0.444x + 0.11(r=0.93) between $LI_{NLE}$ and $LI_{WAC}$, y = 0.93x + 0.008(r=0.88) between LI(NLE) and $LI_{Snook}$. The LI values by WAC was significantly lower than those by the other tools. The compared features, strength and limitation among these tools were described in this paper.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.239-247
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• 2008

Low back disorders (LBDs) have been the most common musculoskeletal problem in Korean workplaces. It affects many workers, and is associated with high costs to many companies as well as the individual, which can negatively influence even the quality of life of workers. The _evaluation of low back disorder risk associated with manual materials handling tasks can be performed using variety of ergonomic assessment tools such as National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Revised Lifting Equation (NLE), the Washington Administrative Code 296-62-0517 (WAC), the Snook Tables etc. But most of these tools provide limited information for choosing the most appropriate assessment method for a particular job and in finding out advantage and disadvantage of the methods, and few have been assessed for their predictive ability. The focus of this study was to _evaluate spinal loads in real time with lifting and pulling heavy cow leathers in variety of postures. Data for estimating mean trunk motions were collected as employees did their work at the job site, using the Lumbar Motion Monitor. Eight employees (2 males, 6 females) were selected in this study, in which the load weight and the vertical start and destination heights of the activity remained constant throughout the task. Variance components (three dimensional spaces) of mean trunk kinematic measures were estimated in a hierarchical design. They were used to compute velocity and acceleration of multiple employees performing the same task and to repetitive movements within a task. Therefore, a results of this study could be used as a quantitative, objective measure to design the workplace so that the risk of occupationally related low back disorder should be minimized.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Technology Engineers
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• v.8 no.6
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• pp.50-54
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• 1999

In the process of designing a wheel balancer an ergonomic evaluation model has shown that manual tire handling onthe machine was often the major problem, The root of the problem lay in the design of machine's shaft which is influenced by the opeative handling task. Several methods were reviewed for determining the correct shaft' sizes but the Revised NIOSH Equation and the Lifting Stress Calculator were found to be the only suitable models for this study. An application of these mathematical models has shoed that the shaft length and the shaft height were the most critical measurement By analyzing these conclusion s the correct shaft size parameters became clearly defined.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.90-96
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• 2004

The objective of this study was to develop a model for safe work load based on a physiological model of metabolic energy of manual material handling tasks. Fifteen male subjects voluntarily participated in this study. Lifting activities with four different weights, 0, 8, 16, 24kg, and four different working frequencies (2, 5, 8, 11 lifts/min) for a lifting range from floor to the knuckle height of 76cm were considered. Oxygen consumption rates and heart rates were measured during the performance of sixteen different lifting activities. Simplified predictive equations for estimating the oxygen consumption rate and the heart rate were developed. The oxygen consumption rate and the heart rate could be expressed as a function of task variables; frequency and the weight of the load, and a personal variable, body weight, and their interactions. The coefficients of determination ($r^2$) of the model were 0.9777 and 0.9784, respectively, for the oxygen consumption rate and the heart rate. The model of oxygen consumption rate was modified to estimate the work load for the given oxygen consumption rate. The overall absolute percent errors of the validation of this equation for work load with the original data set was 39.03%. The overall absolute percent errors were much larger than this for the two models based on the US population. The models for the oxygen consumption rate and for the work load developed in this study work better than the two models based on the US population. However, without considering the biomechanical approach, the developed model for the work load and the two US models are not recommended to estimate the work loads for low frequent lifting activities.