Standard specifications of Material handling

by Martin Jacob Equip2go

In the modern workplace, heavy materials are handled with the help of hand trucks, pallet trucks and forklifts. A lot of manual work is still required. Approximately one million work-related musculoskeletal injuries occur in the United States each year. Many of these are preventable.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has created comprehensive guidelines for workers. These include guidelines for ergonomic material handling that include both recommendations for ergonomically designed workplaces and the safest handling of materials.

Although there may be costs involved in improving the work environment and training employees, the return in productivity is greater than that. Worker fatigue is reduced and there are fewer interruptions and failures in production while there are fewer injuries to attend to. Absence time and recovery rates are significantly reduced in a safe working environment that you can check at equip2go.com.au. Additionally, very few workers' compensation claims are filed.

The guidelines identify five manual material handling errors that lead to injuries. These include lifting with awkward postures, repetitive movements, trying to lift or move very heavy loads, standing in a fixed position for too long, and contact with sharp or hard surfaces. In addition, exposure to extreme heat, cold, noise, or air pollution can cause illness, fatigue, and other problems.

Try to minimize employee handling of equipment with hard-edged surfaces. Whenever possible, purchase ergonomically designed material handling equipment. When noise is unavoidable, provide ear protection. A variety of breathing apparatus should be on hand and freely available for use in dusty conditions or strong fumes.

Talk to workers to find problem areas. They may be experiencing something that is causing them chronic pain or discomfort and they don't talk about it for fear of losing their job or losing face with their workers. Also, look at historical reasons for an employee's absence or sick leave. There may be a pattern that will lead you to the source of the problem.

Once you identify the problem areas, you can begin to change the employees' duties and their work environment. Rather than relying on one worker to handle one type of task, giving them a more varied work structure will reduce the likelihood of repetitive strain injury (RSI). Heavy loads must be distributed or handled by machinery. All employees should be taught the rules of ergonomic lifting and encouraged to always lift and move objects correctly to avoid back and other injuries.Since the recession hit, many businesses, both large and small, have acted like deer in headlights.