An observational method for Postural Ergonomic Risk Assessment (PERA)

Monotonous, repetitive work characterizes production lines. Repetitive movements and awkward postures are the most prominent physical risk factors in the workplace. Various legislations have been enacted along with technical standards for ergonomic risk evaluation to ensure the safety of the operators. There are numerous methods to assess the ergonomic risk at work. However, most methods are not meant to be used for assessing cyclic work. This paper proposes a method, Postural Ergonomic Risk Assessment (PERA), which is suitable to evaluate the postural ergonomic risk of short cyclic assembly work. Its key features are simplicity and compliance with standards. The added value of the method is that it provides an analysis of every work task in the work cycle, which facilitates the identification of sources of high risk to the operator. The method has been verified on nine work cycles, constituted by 88 work tasks, and it demonstrates accordance with the European Assembly Worksheet (EAWS), which has been developed to comply with the relevant standards and is one of the most comprehensive tools for ergonomic risk assessment. Industrial relevance: The simplicity and the compliance with standards of the proposed method would allow for a quick check of every work task of the work cycle and identification of problem areas. With further work, it would be possible to integrate the method along with work design tools used in the industry.