Job rotation designed to prevent musculoskeletal disorders and control risk in manufacturing industries: A systematic review

Abstract

To better understand job rotation in the manufacturing industry, we completed a systematic review asking the following questions: 1) How do job-rotation programs impact work-related musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) and related risk control for these MSDs, as well as psychosocial factors? and 2) How best should the job rotation programs be designed? We searched MEDLINE, EMBASE, Business Source Premier, ISI Web of Knowledge, CINAHL, PsyINFO, Scopus, and SciELO databases for articles published in peer-reviewed journals. Eligible studies were examined by two independent reviewers for relevance (population of manufacturing workers, outcomes of musculoskeletal disease, physical factors, psychosocial factors, and strategies used in job-rotation implantation) and methodological quality rating. From 10,809 potential articles, 71 were read for full text analysis. Of the 14 studies included for data extraction, two were non-randomized control trial studies, one was a case-control study, and 11 were cross-sectional comparisons. Only one, with a case-control design, was scored with good methodological quality. Currently, weak evidence exists supporting job rotation as a strategy for the prevention and control of musculoskeletal disorders. Job rotation did not appear to reduce the exposure of physical risk factors; yet, there are positive correlations between job rotation and higher job satisfaction. Worker training has been described as a crucial component of a successful job-rotation program. The studies reported a range of parameters used to implement and measure job-rotation programs. More rigorous studies are needed to better understand the full impact of job rotation on production and health.

Towards Dynamic and Adaptive Allocation of Staff in a Digital-organized Production Context: An Innovative Perspective from Work Science

“…Job rotation programs have been tested as well, in the wake of the lean manufacturing movement or in attempts to manage exposure to factors causing musculoskeletal injuries. In the latter case, the results are not convincing, according to the most recent review of the literature [6]. The inadequacy of these strategies has been noted previously [7].…”

“…providing pauses or breaks) or allotting vehicles, equipment and tools to workers [21]. Existing job rotation programs are focused primarily on managing biomechanical and organizational risks [6]. Analytical models focused on integrating these two perspectives include factors such as details of work contracts (work shifts, part-time, flexible scheduling), worker preferences, level of production, skills, training, physical capacity and experience, as well as the effects of learning [13,[21][22][23][24], exposure to noise, physical workload or anthropometric data [13,22,23,[25][26][27][28][29], age [11,14] and cognitive ergonomic factors such as human reliability or task complexity [27,30,31].…”

“…• Integrating variables from work sciences into existing process scheduling or balancing models via constraints in the model [21,32]; • Treating the staff allocation problem as a multi-criteria/objective decision problem [21,24]; • Building a model based on heuristics or meta-heuristics (artificial intelligence approaches) such as genetic algorithms, the simulated annealing algorithm or ant algorithm [22,25,28] fuzzy logic [27] or particle swarms [26] to integrate certain operational risks into risks identified in work science [6]; • Building a model based on integer (linear or nonlinear)…”

Effectiveness of job rotation for preventing work-related musculoskeletal diseases: a cluster randomised controlled trial

“…Despite the potential benefits of job rotation for reducing exposure and preventing musculoskeletal disorders, as widely propagated among industrial managers and described in the literature, two recent systematic reviews reported weak evidence for job rotation effectiveness and indicated that it increases exposure 8 9. Only the study of Padula et al 8 focused on the concept of job rotation proposed for manufacturing industries.…”

“…Only the study of Padula et al 8 focused on the concept of job rotation proposed for manufacturing industries. It demonstrated that few studies have evaluated the benefit of job rotation to musculoskeletal health in industrial environments.…”