Management of Hand Screen Printing Workers Health Using Ergonomic Design Intervention

Abstract

Hand Screen Printing (HSP) is one of the dominant textile-processing industries that plays a significant role in the employment of people in and around the rural regions of the developing countries. Further, most of the HSP industries are small scale industries sector, workers are illiterate or lack work safety knowledge, also both management and workers ignore the ergonomic issues in their day to day life. Though various research groups have attempted to evaluate both qualitatively and quantitative the ergonomic issues faced by HSP workers, due to lack of direct solution to improve the HSP workers’ ergonomic environment, there is still a huge space is available for further intervention. The present study aims to redesign the squeegee frame for HSP workers and validate its effect over the workers’ health. In this study, the traditional squeegee was modified by considering the evaluated ergonomic issues. To evaluate the design intervention, ten male volunteers participated in the study and performed the HSP operation using both traditional squeegee (pre-intervention) and retrofitted squeegee (post-intervention). Further, the study population was divided into two equal group such as control group and low back pain (LBP) group. The surface Electromyogram (sEMG) signal, Rapid Entire Body Assessment (REBA) score and Borg’s scale data were collected, to assess the post intervention attempt. Result inferred that retrofitted squeegee intervention had reduced the REBA score (postural risk) by 52% and Borg’s scale by 51% (workers’ pain intensity). In addendum, sEMG study supported these findings by showing a decline in muscle fatigue for the LBP group. This study concludes that, retrofitted squeegee intervention aspect can be an effective agent to improve the ergonomic posture and reduce the musculoskeletal disorders among HSP workers and significantly increase the productive of textile industry.