Presented by Murray Gibson, MISE, PE, CPE; Bob Sesek, MS; Anjaneya 'AJ' Bandekar, PhD, CSP, AEP; Rich Sesek, PhD, CPE; and Deep South Center for Occupational Health & Safety

Webinar Details: https://www.coeh.berkeley.edu/webinar...

Many ergonomic evaluation and risk assessment tools have been around for decades, and were designed to evaluate single or monotask work. In practice, there are few singletask jobs. Most work is multitask, exposing the worker to ergonomic risk factors of different levels (i.e., forces of different magnitude, postures of different severity, etc.). This presentation will review a timeline of the evolution of ergonomic assessment tools, and describe how tools are rapidly transitioning from singletask to multitask models. Newer multitask models such as Auburn University FFT (Fatigue Failure Theory) and RCRA (Recommended Cumulative Recovery Allowance, Gibson & Potvin 2016) offer tremendous advantages over earlier singletask models. These advantages include the ability to calculate job rotation path exposures, calculate cumulative daily exposure limits, and determine the contribution of each task/step to the overall risk/evaluation metric. New multitask models also experience tremendously less model error than older singletask models. Learners will review model error through practical examples, and learn to apply Rules for Tools, a design taxonomy for developing new tools, and a basis of evaluation when comparing existing tools.

At the completion of this activity, the learner will be able to:
Discuss the development and evolution of ergonomic evaluation / risk assessment tools over time
Describe model errors encountered when using singletask models to evaluate multitask work
Identify advantages of newer multitask models such as FFT and RCRA
Apply ‘Rules for Tools,’ a design taxonomy to develop new tools, and to evaluate and compare existing tools