Iran Occupational Health

Background and aims: Evaluation of physical pressure during different working conditions is one of the important and applicable aspects of human factors engineering at industrial and construction environments. accurate calculation of physical pressure helps to improve working condition and status of workers. On of the challenges that experts faced with is the optimal assignment of human resources to the diverse tasks with respect to physical features of them.

Methods: In this study, we chose 9 casual construction works to clarify our subject. Then we measure the pressure on lumbar area for all person during different position. In order to measuring the pressure, we assume average time that each person be in the different position in a single shift. After that we calculate work risks by means of Chaffin and Doisis model. At the next step in order to assign work to workers we use a linear programming model at which the cost of assignments is equal to work risks and the objective function is to minimize total work risk. Finally, by solving the model, best assignment is achieved.

Results: Since we choose 5th percentiles to 95th percentiles anthropometric features, we find out that by increasing height and weight, the risk of all works increases too. However, by means of proposed method, we can make a decision that minimizes person’s work risk.

Conclusion: Persons that has higher anthropometric features are not suitable for these kind of construction works and their risk increases up to 20% with respect to other ones. Also using mentioned method for decreasing total work risk among people is made benefits.