Musculo-Skeletal Disorders(MSDs) Risk Assessment in Traditional Small Scale Industries by Using Reba(Rapid Entire Body Assessment) Method

Traditional small scale industries include khadi village industries, handlooms, handicrafts, Sericulture etc. Handicraft workers are prone to musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) due to unnatural work postures, unsafe working practices, long working hours and many risks of work accidents caused by unsafe conditions. REBA (Rapid Entire Body Assessment) is ergonomics assessment tool useful for manual tasks risk assessment. The purpose of study is to find out the risk of MSDs and classify the risk in handicraft workers. To achieve this purpose70 healthy workers from 3 NGOs, Ahmedabad were selected. A video of different sections like sampling, stitching, weaving, embroidery, patch- working was taken. From videos Snapshots of 70 workers working in different sections were obtained. Both frontal and sagital plane analysis was done. The snapshots were analyzed to fill the scores in REBA. From REBA method it is assessed that 92-95 % handicraft workers have risks of MSDs. Workers from embroidery and patch working are at high risk, while in stitching, sampling, weaving are at medium risk of MSDs.