Work posture improvement at plastic printing process in plastic manufacturing industry

Chiew, Shet Yee (2017) Work posture improvement at plastic printing process in plastic manufacturing industry. Project Report. Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka, Melaka, Malaysia. (Submitted)

	Text (24 Pages) Work Posture Improvement At Plastic Printing Process In Plastic Manufacturing Industry - Chiew Shet Yee - 24 pages.pdf - Submitted Version Download (572kB)
	Text (Full Text) Work posture improvement at plastic printing process in plastic manufacturing industry.pdf - Submitted Version Restricted to Repository staff only Download (5MB)

Abstract

Over the past decades, manufacturing industry has been recognized as the main driver for export performance as well as for the impressive economic growth in Malaysia. Among all the manufacturing industries, plastic manufacturing industry is one of the most dynamic growth sectors due to the high demand of consumers. In plastic manufacturing industry, there are 5 main production processes which are printing, lamination, extrusion, slitting and cutting processes. In plastic printing process, the printing workstations are semi-automated. At these workstations, the operators are exposed to various ergonomics risk factors such as lifting and handling heavy loads, non-neutral work posture, prolonged standing, and heat stress. In order to enhance the productivity, product quality, and occupational safety and health of operators, the aim of this study is to redesign the existing plastic printing workstation for improving work posture to prevent the occurrence of occupational injuries. This study applied workplace observation and questionnaire survey to investigate the ergonomics related problems faced by the operators who are carrying out plastic printing process in a plastic manufacturing industry. The risk factor which relates to non-neutral work posture was analyzed by Rapid Upper Limb Assessment (RULA). The RULA scores obtained for each posture were 5, 6 or 7, which indicated that the postures should be investigated further and changed. Furthermore, the operators requirements regarding plastic printing workstation were collected and transformed into House of Quality (HOQ). Then, three concepts of the improved design workstation were sketched. They were screened by using Pugh method to select the optimum design concept of workstation. Cost and benefit analysis (CBA) was used to evaluate effectiveness of the improved design workstation in terms of cost saving and return on investment (ROI). This study concluded that the new design of the workstation has improved the RULA score. Meanwhile, this study suggested further investigation of productivity and product quality analysis and the study on muscle activity for the operators in future study.

Actions (login required)

View Item