Affiliations: [a] Industrial Engineering Program, University of Cincinnati, ML 0116, Cincinnati, OH 45221-0116, USA | [b] Center for Industrial Ergonomics, Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Louisville Louisville, KY 40292, USA
Correspondence:
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Corresponding author: Waldemar Karwowski, Center for Industrial Ergonomics, Lutz Hall, Room 445, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY 40292, USA
Abstract: The primary objective of this research is to determine whether or not worker expertise can be used to evaluate industrial lifting activities in order to prevent lower back injuries in the workplace. Twenty-two professionals and twenty-two skilled laborers participated in the study. The results obtained in this study indicate that it may possible to use personal knowledge and experience in evaluating physical tasks such as lifting. Furthermore, there was no difference between professionals and skilled laborers in terms of the cognitive patterns relating input to output variables. This provides preliminary evidence that the logic of experienced workers is as good as that of professionals. In the open lifting model examined in this study, it is clear that the weight of load is perceived by the study participants as the most important variable in evaluating lifting activities and is in agreement with findings in the published literature. In the closed loop model, perceived risk emerges as an important variable in determining the effort level exerted during lifting activities, even more important than the weight of load.
Keywords: manual lifting, human expertise, linguistic evaluation
