Cost-Effective Ergonomics Program
Aerospace and Aircraft Manufacturing Firm
Solution Overview
Client:
Aerospace and Aircraft Manufacturing Firm
Business Challenge:
- A client needed a cost-effective ergonomic initiative to limit injuries and increase productivity.
Solution:
- Apex created a comprehensive ergonomic program to identify root cause of work procedures that effect workers movement for potential injuries.
Results:
- The program implemented new procedures to limit injuries and lost workdays for workers and increased worker morale.
Challenge
Provide strategic insight and develop a cost-effective program to increase productivity while controlling and/or lowering ergonomic related injuries associated with physically demanding tasks of bending, lifting and pulling trailer tongues to transport heavy, and sometimes hazardous, equipment to and from airfield and storage yards.
Solution
The Apex Companies team developed a comprehensive methodology to quantitatively and qualitatively assess the true impact of manually lifting trailer tongues lying on the ground. The quantitative assessments revealed that the client’s work compensation claim costs were over $700,000 in ergonomic related cases. Qualitative assessments identified six key risk factors affecting the shoulders, trunk and back, hand and wrist, and neck associated with pushing, pulling, gripping, bending forward, lifting with one or two hands and rotating the neck.
Results
The program reduced ergonomic risk from 35 to 3 relating to the ergonomic exposure database scoring and improved working postures by reducing neck and trunk rotation and eliminating lifting of tongues from the ground level. In addition, productivity was improved through the increased efficiency of the transport process which reduced entries and exits with forklifts by 50-75% and reduced the cycle time per hook. After effective improvements were made, the worker morale increased while the ergonomic injuries decreased along with the number of Lost & Restricted Workdays.