An ergonomic assessment of the airline baggage handler

47The purpose of introducing the pilot study was to determine if the new systemwould help bring down the incidence rate of back injury by decreasing themusculoskeletal load on the handlers. Another purpose was to see if the pilot designsuggested met the ergonomic changes obtained from the feedback of the workers'surveys. To accomplish this, three volunteer baggage handlers participated in acontrolled experiment. The handlers had to lift a 15kg bag; six lifts per minute, fromthree different conveyor belt heights on to a dolly. Two of the three heights consisted ofthe old conveyor belt dimensions, and the third height was developed from the surveyand ergonomic guidelines.During the experiment, the test subjects were instructed to lift for 15-minuteintervals. During the task performance, the baggage handlers were filmed as well asfitted with ECG sensors to monitor and record their heart rates. The handlers wereadministered a pain and discomfort rating scale in which they indicated their discomfortlevels by using a 10 cm visual analog scale (VAS) with verbal descriptions. The pilotstudy showed that all four measured dependent variables, heart rate, perceived exertion,discomfort, and disc compression were significantly lower for the test conveyor with 83cm height. Although the sample size was limited this investigation clearly indicated thatthe ergonomic recommendation for workspace design was superior to the existing design.3.5.3 Limitations of the StudyThis study took a very simple but practical ergonomic approach towards examining thebaggage handling conveyor system and its effects on posture. Unlike the prior study byThomas et al., (1995) on conveyor belts mentioned above in this work, the baggagehandler's survey and ergonomic evaluation and assessment of the baggage conveyor belts