Advancements in Ergonomics - Case Study Example

NIOSH is an acronym for National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. The Institute provides guidelines for safe working procedures in various disciplines, especially those fields where the use of physical exercise is directly involved. The incumbent organization provides necessary awareness about the kind of material to be used and it also identifies the material which might not add any value to the processes and human safety while working in an industrial environment. The main purpose of this organization has been to reduce injuries and make physical work safer and more enjoyable.

Various devices have been introduced to create comfort in the organizational environment. The back belt is one of them, which has been used to a certain degree. The purpose of the back belt is to reduce the stress that may be exerted on the body while performing activities during the operations. In an industrial environment, the workers are usually confronted with the lifting of heavy objects, leaning against them, or sliding into the very narrow parts of the machine, for this purpose back belts provide sufficient resistance to the back. The usage of back belts is not just limited to the working environment, many athletes use them while lifting heavyweight material, and even deep sea divers use them to provide support against any sudden jerk that may be felt by the body.

Back belts are worn to reduce the chances of stress and injury to the body, however, on the contrary, research conducted in this regard by the administrative body, NOISH has shown that there is little effectiveness provided by these back belts, rather they squeeze up the body and limit the motion. While similar things were in practice for usage, NOISH felt the need for conducting research for this purpose, and through several types of research conducted it was evaluated that back belts add no or little value to the safety aspect; rather they limit the free movement and capacity of the body.

The use of back belts is quite common in industrial environments, and a considerable proportion of workers use them in their daily activities. The use of back belts has been on the rise and roughly four million back belts in various forms have been sold out ever since 1995 (Shannon, 2002). It has become a trend in many organizations where the workers wear them without looking into the technical aspects and their relative effectiveness.

Considering the high percentage of use, the administrative body felt obliged to investigate the usefulness of this belt and conducted detailed research. The study took into account every possible aspect of the subject to assess the case appropriately.

Center For Disease Control and Prevention (C.D.C) in collaboration with NIOSH researched to solve this mystery and concluded that back belts are barely effective (NOISH, 2008).

The study was a thorough one and stretched over two years. During the study comparisons were drawn between the cases where the back belts were used and others where operations were performed without the usage of back belts. No substantial difference was seen in either of them.

The study also investigated the various types of belts that are available commercially and are practically in use. Through the study it was determined that nearly 70 types of back belts are in practice in different organizational environments, each of them varying from the other in capacity and strength. To ensure the reliability and credibility of the research conducted, these studies were conducted in several laboratories and under various circumstances. The study took into consideration all the necessary variables which needed to be investigated. It took the opinion of thousands of workers who are using the belts regularly as well as of the manufacturers who are receiving orders for a large number of back belts for usage in an industrial environment. The study reported that these belts reduce the free movement which is needed while bending and leaning towards or against in the working environments. They were reported to freeze the free movement of the abdomen which goes against their usage and productivity factor (NOISH, 2000).

Having looked into extensive usage of this type of belt and further investigated its effectiveness through a case study, it can be deduced that natural prevention and safety is far better than the usage of any other artificial source in the form of belts and various other materials. Proper guidance if provided can make things safe without relying on the belts. There are organizational head entities in various parts of the world that work on a local level, and each of them provides necessary counseling for safe working procedures. These guidelines include the amount of distance to be maintained from the equipment, they further allow sufficient knowledge of how to deal with the heavy machinery, and in a broader perspective, they encourage the usage of automated machinery to provide safety and comfort to the workers. Read More