Abstract
A significant amount (8.6%) of the total population comprises tribal people in India according to the 2011 census. The major portion of the tribal population is an inhabitant of the forest area and their entire life revolves around the forest. Plate making by using leaves is an environment-friendly industry and a huge number of tribal females are involved in it. Unfortunately, there is a dearth of study on occupational health in this sector. Our previous study showed that a large number of tribal females suffered from work-related musculoskeletal problems. The present study aimed at the development of low-cost ergonomic workstations for them. A low-cost prototype of a workstation was designed based on the ergonomic principle. The newly designed work station used by 50 female workers for two weeks and feedback was collected. The Body Part Discomfort (BPD) rating and working postures were evaluated by Rapid Entire Body Assessment (REBA) and Rapid Upper Limb Assessment (RULA) methods. The ergonomic prototype was well accepted by them and a significant reduction in body discomfort rating during work was observed. The development of more prototypes and ergonomic evaluation is needed for the improvement of their quality of life of them.
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Acknowledgements
SM would like to acknowledge NFST (Ministry of Tribal Affairs, Govt. of India) and SS acknowledges partial financial support from Kalyani University’s PRG, DST-PURSE II for the conduct of this research work. The authors would also like to acknowledge other research support from the Department of Physiology, the University of Kalyani, and all the subjects for their kind cooperation in the report.
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Mandi, S., Sahu, S. (2023). An Ergonomic Study for the Development of Low-Cost Work Station for Tribal Sal Leaf Plate Makers. In: Chigullapalli, S., Susha Lekshmi, S.U., Deshpande, A.P. (eds) Rural Technology Development and Delivery. Design Science and Innovation. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-2312-8_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-2312-8_8
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