Ergonomic risk factors in material handling for warehouse operations

This project is conducted in Petronas Chemical Fertilizer Kedah Bhd. (PCFK) which is a Malaysian urea production company and a wholly owned subsidiary of Petroliam Nasional (Petronas). There are many risks for workers while performing the jobs. One of them is ergonomic risk. This will have an affect to the safety of their employees and in a long run will give impact to them. Eventually this risk will affect to the productivity of workers. The study on ergonomic risk factor assessment in manual material handling being carried out at their material warehouse department. This study aims to observe the current warehouse manual material handling activities and analyzing the risk factors by computing the Composite Lifting Index (CLI) developed by NIOSH (National Institute of Safety and Health) to identify tasks which pose to ergonomic risk. The study identified lifting activities in the warehouse area. The activities of lifting and lowering fast moving item, heavy items (stud bolt) and extreamly heavy item (Cage) was analyzed using NIOSH Lifting Equations, and the CLI were computed. The results indicates that there are significant level of physical stress associated with the selected tasks. The study proposed the countermeasure include restructuring or changing workplace conditions, to make the job easier, and reducing stressors that cause musculoskeletal disorders. Redesigning the material handling activities can lead to a reduced CLI and thus can also reduce the workers musculoskeletal discomfort situations. The proposed counter measured was reevaluated to make sure that the jobs are safe according to NIOSH standard