A case study of a principally new way of materials kitting—an evaluation of time consumption and physical workload

Mechanical exposure among general practice dentists in Sweden and possible implications of rationalisation

“…The angular velocities for the head, back and upper arms were significantly lower and the differences between the 90th and the 10th percentiles smaller, compared with the other work tasks. The figures for angular velocities are in line with that of modern industrial assembly work (Christmansson et al 2002, Balogh et al 2006. Low angular velocities are explained by high precision demands and, thereby, sustained stabilising contractions of the agonist and antagonist of muscles around the joints.…”

“…Furthermore, considering the angular velocities of the right upper arm, both the very low angular velocities for dentists in the present study (8.68/s), and the high angular velocities for assembly workers (52.08/s) seem to be associated with a high prevalence of WMSD in the shoulder/neck region (Christmansson et al 2002, Alexopoulos et al 2004, Dong et al 2007, Hayes et al 2009). For car disassembly workers, the angular velocity was 218/s and the prevalence of WMSD in the shoulder/neck region seemed to be modest (Kazmierczak 2005).…”

“…In general, the angular velocities were three to four times lower for the dentists assessed by similar analytical methods. In addition, the VAW for the dentists implied more forward flexion of the head and back, compared with both material picking (Christmansson et al 2002) and car disassembly work . All together, these comparisons suggest more riskful mechanical exposures during dental VAW compared with the industrial work (cf.…”

Task-based estimation of mechanical job exposure in occupational groups

“…Some researchers have proposed that mechanical job-exposure estimates would be more correct if based on tasks occurring in jobs rather than on merely occupation (6,10,11). For instance, the job exposure of a particular person could be estimated by combining information on the proportions of all different tasks in the job of that person with expected task exposures according to a database derived with other persons (6).…”

Kitting and time efficiency in manual assembly

“…Some aspects related to kitting have been studied, such as the allocation of parts to kits (Chen and Wilhelm 1997;Chen and Wilhelm 1993) and the efficiency of kit preparation and/or order picking operations (e.g. Christmansson et al 2002;Brynzér and Johansson 1995;Tamaki and Nof 1991;Sellers and Nof 1986), but, as pointed out by Hua and Johnson (2010), there is a lack of knowledge about when and where kitting should be used. The possible effects of the use of kitting on the time efficiency of the assembly operations is one area that has not been thoroughly investigated.…”