August 14, 1996

Safer Workplace in Furniture Industry Target of Researchers' Study

Bending, lifting, twisting--these are simple movements many of us perform every day without mishap. In furniture factories, however, workers who make these motions time and time again throughout the day can end up injured, costing themselves their jobs and their employers tens of thousands of dollars.

Dr. Gary Mirka and Dr. Carolyn Sommerich, assistant professors of industrial engineering at North Carolina State University, are conducting research that will ultimately help furniture companies identify jobs with a high risk for injury and provide suggested improvements.

Their ergonomic analysis of furniture manufacturing, funded by the Furniture Manufacturing and Management Center at NC State, is at the halfway point of its two years. During the first year, Mirka studied factories for jobs that could produce low back injuries. For the next year, Sommerich will look for jobs that lead to wrist, hand and shoulder problems. Together they aim to develop a checklist of hazards and create a handbook of guidelines that will make working in a furniture factory safer.

One of their goals is to help companies identify real problem jobs and then prioritize the steps to take to eliminate these problems.

"We don't want our checklist to identify every job as hazardous when we know that's not true," said Sommerich.

Most current checklists are too sensitive, she said, and thus not very useful in determining truly high-risk jobs. Many are derived from automobile industry data, but no one has yet based one on the furniture industry's specific needs. Mirka and Sommerich's will be the first.

Ideally, a safety specialist would use the checklist to identify a problem and consult the handbook for help. In many cases, however, nurses, supervisors and others will use these tools.

According to Jon Parish, director of loss control and environment for Lane Furniture in Alta Vista, Va., most furniture companies are small and do not have employees who focus only on safety in their jobs, so they often don't have access to the kind of knowledge they need to make informed safety decisions. He believes the checklists and handbooks will help employees stay alert to the potential for injury.

"In the furniture industry we've done quite a bit to address the obvious unsafe conditions. We're moving to the more sophisticated plane of the not-so-obvious unsafe conditions, and that's where the research of Drs. Mirka and Sommerich comes in," Parish said. "Their sophisticated research is going to help us identify those problems."

The researchers believe the tools will yield other benefits as well. Low back injuries alone cost employers in the United States some $30 billion annually in medical, retraining and other expenses, so the checklist and handbook could help take a bite out of those losses. Additionally, individuals who use the tools and then change jobs will take the knowledge with them and will educate others at the new company.

"Educating industry personnel about good workstation design principles as well as proper lifting mechanics will help head-off back injuries down the road," Mirka said. "Simple solutions to these problems such as keeping objects to be lifted between the height of the knee and the height of the shoulder can have a long-term impact on the incidence of low back injury. This is what we hope to provide to the furniture industry--simple, inexpensive solutions that can have a great impact."

To construct the tools, the researchers visit furniture factories to observe and even videotape workers doing their jobs. They recruit workers to wear equipment such as a Lumbar Motion Monitor, a device that gathers data about upper body movements .

They examine the company's injury and illness logs required by the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) and look for trends in the data that point to jobs producing specific recurring injuries. Also, they interview nurses, safety specialists and others to gain their perspectives on the problems inherent in some jobs.

Mirka and Sommerich use this information to compile their checklist, which they take back to furniture plants and apply to selected jobs. To test accuracy, the researchers match their results against the OSHA logs. After making any necessary adjustments, they give the checklist to furniture personnel to gauge user friendliness.

Currently, Mirka and Sommerich are looking for companies to participate in the project. Interested furniture industry personnel can call the researchers for details: Gary Mirka (919) 515-6399; Carolyn Sommerich (919) 515-8614.

/ News Index / News Archives Index /