A study of workers posture on napier harvest process

Abstract

Workers in the agriculture industry are extremely exposed to the risk of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) either in short or long term which is directly affected to the production outputs. As initial, this paper will review the biomechanical study on various agriculture industries in order to improve the work methods and techniques. The purpose of this study is to investigate the workers posture during Napier harvest process. There are two types of harvest method will be focused on; manual chopping and using machine. To assess real practices in harvesting work, field observation has been conducted to investigate the workers posture and then it is recorded. Next, human model was constructed with the 50th percentile value for male body segment. Then biomechanical posture simulation has been conducted and the biology data collected for analysis purpose. The analysis result shows that manual chopping harvest method consuming greater muscle activity compared to using of machine. Thus, this study provides the preliminary quantitative data to improve the work methods and techniques on Napier harvesting process in conjunction to ensure the ergonomic interventions. Eventually, this study also might contribute of generating the innovation in designing new tools to increase the agriculture workers performance.