Influences of Body Position Selections on Knob Selections in Malaysian Manufacturing Industries

Abstract

Muscle fatigue and the development of hand-related musculoskeletal injuries can be caused by body positions that fail to accommodate control interfaces such as control knobs. There appear to be limited studies that investigate how different selections of body positions affect various selections of knobs, despite the fact that some articles have presented theoretical associations between different body positions and knob shapes. The goal of this paper is to determine the influences of body position selections on the knob selections of manual workers from several Malaysian manufacturing industries. A survey and observational studies were conducted, with over 70 responses collected for the survey and 79 responses collected for the observation. The survey responses were entered into Minitab 16 for the analysis, while the observation responses were sorted by frequency. The results show that the majority of the workers normally and preferably use the standing, seated and kneeling position for their manual work. The selections of the body positions that the workers assume also considerably affect the knob selections.