Frankly, many activities in an organization involve physical tasks that have potential for injury. The science of ergonomics addresses these concerns, so any time standards on human factors are released you certainly should pay attention. The new ISO/TR 12295, “Ergonomics – Application document for International Standards on manual handling (ISO 11228-1, ISO 11228-2 and ISO 11228-3) and evaluation of static working postures (ISO 11226),” supports earlier ISO documentation for working postures and material handling. It’s an application guide, offering a simple risk assessment methodology that can be used by small and medium enterprises. And the annexes provide more detailed assessment methods for users at every level.
This means that the new technical report helps in two areas. One, it can help “lay” users identify situations where the ISO 11226 and/or the ISO 11228 series can be applied. And secondly, it offers a “quick assessment” technique that can be used for risk assessment of various activities within an organization.
Since this is a European standard, measurements are metric. So you’ll need to do some converting to make use of the “quick assessment” questionnaires. These questions, provided in tabular format, make up the actual standard itself. You’ll use them to see if you need to refer to one or more of the following documents:
- ISO 11226, 1st Edition, Ergonomics — Evaluation of Static Working Postures
- ISO 11228-1, 1st Edition, Ergonomics – Manual Handling – Part 1: Lifting and Carrying
- ISO 11228-2, 1st Edition, Ergonomics – Manual Handling – Part 2: Pushing and Pulling
- ISO 11228-3, 1st Edition Reprint, Ergonomics – Manual Handling – Part 3: Handling of Low Loads at High Frequency
Of course, in doing your analysis you may determine that the tasks being assessed are acceptable as is. This means that your risk assessment is complete!
The bulk of the document is contained in the 3 Annexes. Each provides an application aid for one of the 3 parts of the ISO 11228 series. You’ll find significant data in these Annexes, with plenty of flow charts, tables and figures illustrating the salient points of the analysis. You’ll even get examples of how to input the data you’ll need to collect when doing your assessment.
This is a great companion document to the reference ISO standards. If you need a copy, head to the Document Center webstore at www.document-center.com. There you can search for and order the standards you need to support your engineering, quality, and other management requirements. Or you’re welcome to contact us by phone (650-591-7600), fax (650-591-7617) or email (info@document-center.com). We’ve been working with standards since 1982. Make us your Standards Experts!
