Mental workload and musculoskeletal disorders into the machine operators furniture industry

摘要

This study aimed to characterize the relationship between mental workload and musculoskeletal disorders in the cutting machine operators in a furniture industry. This was a case study based on Ergonomics Analysis of Labor and other methodological resources such as analysis of the speech and comments, with the purpose of describing the job organization and structure of the operators cutting machine strips of wood, as well as identify the main requirements and constraints at work. The cognitive strategies used by operators to activate and complete the work are, in addition to the gestures and glances between them, the use of memory, attention, perception, thinking, language and learning. In relation to working conditions, the results indicate that noise affects communication between the operators and require physical demands in curvature of the spine during the task, in view of the layout of the workplace, the provision of machinery and anthropometric characteristics of the operators. Accordingly, to understand the situation in its complexity, an explanatory table of the coordinated nature of the work was developed, with intense movements and frequent flow of raw materials and workers, running cyclical operations, requiring precise motor coordination, attention, and fast pace simultaneous communication, mediated by a manual or mechanized control system on the cutting machine strips of wood and other artifacts. Regarding Cognitive Ergonomics, was the difficulty of maintaining the dialogue, causing the workers to communicate via signals obtained through glances and gesticulations, implying an intensification of mental workload, with impact on the prevalence of clinical indications of pain related to musculoskeletal disorders.