Subjective workload and musculoskeletal disorders among workers of a manufacturing company in Iran

Mohammad Khandan ¹ ,
Fatemeh Mirshekari ² ,
Elham Koorsani ² ,
Saeedeh Mosaferchi ³ and
Alireza Koohpaei ^{4 , *}

Authors Information

¹ Ergonomics Department, Health Faculty, Qom University of Medical Sciences, Qom, Iran

² Student Research Committee, Qom University of Medical Sciences, Qom, Iran

³ Ergonomics Department, Faculty of Health, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

⁴ Occupational Health Department, Health Faculty, Work Health Research Centre, Qom University of Medical Sciences, Qom, Iran

Article information

Biotechnology and Health Sciences: February 28, 2018, 5 (1); e13599
Published Online: February 01, 2018
Article Type: Research Article
Received: May 17, 2017
Accepted: September 18, 2017

To Cite: Khandan M, Mirshekari F, Koorsani E, Mosaferchi S, Koohpaei A. et al. Subjective workload and musculoskeletal disorders among workers of a manufacturing company in Iran, Biotech Health Sci. 2018 ;5(1):e13599.

Abstract

Background: One of the main factors for the health and safety issues is workload management. High workload in addition to health and safety problems such as Work-related Musculoskeletal Disorders (WRMSDs), can affect the quality and quantity of the tasks and leads to performance organizational losses finally.

Objectives: The aim of our research was to determining the Relationship between Workload and Musculoskeletal Disorders (as dependent factor) among Workers of an Automotive Components Producer Company in one of the central provinces of Iran, 2016.

Patients and Methods: This study was a cross-sectional study. All operating personnel (n= 170) was considered. Based on the exclusion criteria 107 workers were selected finally. Three questionnaires were used in this study: demographic, the body map (for WRMSDs measurement) and NASA-Task Load Index (TLX) for workload assessment. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS-V20.

Results: The prevalence of WRMSDs among the studied workers over the last 12 months was 53.3%. Workload score was calculated equals to 76.82±16.30. A significant relationship was observed between mental load with neck (P=0.026) and frustration with neck (P=0.023), upper back (P=0.049) and lower back (P=0.04) pain. On the other hand, based on our finding it is revealed that one score increase in mental workload score leads to increasing equals to 6.5% in the WRMSDs.

Conclusions: It was revealed that workload was high in the studied company. Hence the effective programs to mitigate and reducing the workload in order to ergonomic disorder management would be necessary.

© 2018, Biotechnology and Health Sciences. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits copy and redistribute the material just in noncommercial usages, provided the original work is properly cited.

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References

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