Assessment tools analysis of work-related musculoskeletal disorders: strengths and limitations

Abstract

Musculoskeletal disorders are one of the most common occupational diseases, affecting millions of workers in the European Union and costing employers billions of euros. Researching the relationships and possibilities of optimal mutual adaptation, under given conditions, both of human to his work and of work to humans, in order to increase the technical-economic efficiency, to optimize the conditions of satisfaction, motivation and work results, while maintaining the worker’s state of health also involves, as a basic stage, the assessment of the risks of osteomuscular-articular overload. Starting from a statistical synthesis on the incidence of MSD and the characteristic types of demands, the paper systematizes in a unitary vision the categories of methods, techniques and tools available for recording and evaluating the factors of physical and postural stress of workers. The pointed description of three of the most commonly applied ergonomic risk assessment tools, aimed at developing a synthesis of Strengths-Weaknesses type, which highlights the advantages of methods in counterbalance with their limitations, providing a first basis for selection in order to apply them in the practice of companies that are aware that investing in safety means investing in profit and not losing financial resources and implicitly human, material ones.