A participatory approach to eliminating Musculoskeletal disorder risk factors in a paper industry workflow : Developing an assisting tool for paper industry workers by exploring work tasks through participatory design activities

Sammanfattning: This project was implemented as a Master thesis project in Industrial design engineering (IDE). In collaboration with Billerud Karlsborg, the project was initiated to develop proposal for a technological solution for eliminating a manual handling work task in the production line for coated paper products. The design process was implemented  as a Participatory design approach, inviting the workers of the production unit to collaborate in design activites and workshops. The participatory approach was based on the Scandinavian perspective on Participatory design, with influences from the comtemporary views on collaborative design. The project included a holistic ergonomic analysis focused on the assessment of musculoskeletal disorder risk factors in the work task flagged by workers as a cause of work strain. The focused work task documented in detail and assessed through REBA and RULA assessment. The work task involves manual handling of a stack of residual paper that is rolled to a tube, by hand, and subsequently lifted and pushed to a grinder inlet for re-purposing. While the ergonomic analysis confirm that there are postural risk factors present, the pace of work suggests that adequate resting for preventing work stain related to the focused task is possible during work. However, the percieved work strained is suggested to originate from work task in close connection to the focused task. A proposal for a concept that sufficiently eliminates the risk factors found in the focused task is developed based on a human-centered design and anthropometric principles. The development concludes with the construction of a prototype, but time constraints denies evaluation of the prototype with end users. The concept is therefore presented as renders of a 3D-model.