THE IMPLEMENTATION OF ANTHROPOMETRIC MEASUREMENT IN DESIGNING THE ERGONOMICS WORK FURNITURE

Abstract

The productivity of an employee has a crucial role for the company. The higher the level of productivity, the higher the profit they can provide for the company. Ergonomic furniture is one of the supporting examples in increasing employee productivity. Designing ergonomic furniture is the effort taken by the company to boost the employee’s productivity. The ergonomic furniture can provide comfort to the employee and minimize the occurrence of Musculoskeletal Disorders (MSDs). The provided coziness will increase the level of concentration so that the performance of the employee will be increased too. The existence of ergonomic furniture will offer benefits to the company. Therefore, companies are required to provide adequate facilities and infrastructure to support employee activities. One of the company’s facilities is a table and chairs. Tables and chairs must be designed ergonomically, considering that both facilities will continually be used within 8 hours per day. This research aims to utilize anthropometric measurement as a design tool for ergonomic work furniture. The anthropometric measurement was conducted on 85 employees and used 11 body dimensions as a parameter. These body dimensions consist of a supine hand, sitting, forward pinch-grip reach, elbow height, shoulder width, pelvic width, buttock-knee length, knee height, shoulder height, sitting, length of elbow to toe, thigh clearance, and palm width. The 5th percentile was used for four dimensions in this research, while the rest used 95th. The results of this research are expected to minimize the possibility of various health problems caused by the un-ergonomic working furniture so that the employee’s performance will be improved too.