Preventing Back Injury

Your spine is made of 24 individual bones called vertebrae that are spliced on top of each other. Your vertebrae are separated by soft discs of cartilage that act as shock absorber for the vertebrae, and also help your back bending, twisting and moving around. Most support for your spine is maintained by the muscles of your stomach as well as the many muscles and ligaments that go up and down the length of your back.
PREVENTION IS THE BEST MEDICINE
Avoid back injury is much easier than repairing one. Because your back is critically important to your ability to walk, sit, stand, and run, it is important to take care of it. Most back pain arises from using your back improperly, so learning a few basic rules about lifting, posture and proper exercise can help keep your back in good shape.
EXERCISE TO STRENGTHEN THE BACK AND REDUCE STRESS
Having a strong back and abdominal muscles is important for facilitating work in exposing her back each day. Doing simple exercises to strengthen your back, you strengthen not only your back but also reduce stress and improve your appearance! Ask your doctor about the best exercise for you
LOSE WEIGHT
Being overweight and belly exert extra force on the muscles of the back and stomach. His back is to hold the weight in front by swaying backwards, causing excess strain on the lower back muscles. Losing weight, you can reduce strain and pain in his back. Consult your physician for a proper diet plan for you
MAINTAIN GOOD POSTURE
You can prevent many back pains by learning to sit, stand and lift items correctly. Do not slouch when sitting. Slouching makes the back ligaments, not the muscles, stretch and hurt, thus putting pressure on the vertebra. The best way to sit is straight, keeping the lower back glued to the back of the chair with feet flat on the floor, knees slightly slightly higher than your hips. Learn to stand with your head up and shoulders back.
MAINTAIN GOOD POSTURE OR DRIVING WHILE SLEEPING
Sleep on a firm mattress or place plywood between the bed base and mattress for good back support. If your mattress is too soft it could result in a back sprain or sway back. Sleep on your side with knees bent or face-up with a pillow under your knees for support. Drive with your back pressed into the seat. Approach the wheel so your knees are bent and slightly higher than your hips.
PLAN YOUR SURVEY
Lifting objects is often a mindless task. Unfortunately, many people perform their lift incorrectly, resulting in unnecessary strain on the back and surrounding muscles. In order to lift correctly and reduce strain on your back, it is important to plan your lift in advance. This means estimating the weight of the object that you will be moving and the distance it moved. Is it heavy? Will you need help? ¿See any hazards that may be eliminated? Think about this whenever you do any lifting.
CORRECT YOURSELF FROM THE LOAD
Once you have planned your lift, the next important step is to align correctly to load. With legs apart and slightly in front of the other for balance, slowly squat down by bending your knees, not your back. Using both hands, firmly grab the load and back it to your body as close as you can.
LIFT WITH YOUR LEGS, NOT YOUR BACK
Once the load is close to your body, slowly straighten your legs until you are standing upright. Make sure the load is not blocking your vision as you begin to walk slowly to your destination. If you need to turn to the side, turn your feet moving and twisting around the abdomen.
PROPERLY SET THE LOAD
Once you have reached your destination is as important as the load is set down correctly. By reversing the above lifting procedures you can reduce tension in the muscles of the back and abdomen. If you set the load on the ground, open your legs and bending your knees, place the burden off you if the load is set at table height, lower the weight slowly and maintain contact with her until you are sure that the load is secure and will not fall off when you leave.
GET HELP IF NEEDED
If the load is too heavy, bulky or awkward for you to lift alone, find a friend to help you carry it. If no one is available, then consider whether it is possible to divide the load into two smaller loads? Or maybe you can use a cart or dolly to move it. Find simple solutions to help make the move easier and to help your back.

Source
The National Ag Safety Database at: http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/nasd/nasdhome.html
http://www.geosalud.com/Salud% 20Ocupacional/lesion% 20of% 20espalda.htm

By Joselyn Solis 

Identifying the Likely Causes of Problems….

(Also known as Cause and Effect Diagrams, Fishbone Diagrams, Ishikawa Diagrams, Herringbone Diagrams, and Fishikawa Diagrams.) Find all possible problems. When you have a serious problem, it’s important to explore all of the things that could cause it, before you start to think about a solution. That way you can solve the problem completely, first time round, rather than just addressing part of it and having the problem run on and on.

Cause and Effect Analysis gives you a useful way of doing this. This diagram-based technique, which combines Brainstorming with a type of Mind Map, pushes you to consider all possible causes of a problem, rather than just the ones that are most obvious.

We’ll look at Cause and Effect Analysis in this article.

 

About the Tool

Cause and Effect Analysis was devised by professor Kaoru Ishikawa, a pioneer of quality management, in the 1960s. The technique was then published in his 1990 book, “Introduction to Quality Control.”

The diagrams that you create with Cause and Effect Analysis are known as Ishikawa Diagrams or Fishbone Diagrams (because a completed diagram can look like the skeleton of a fish).

Cause and Effect Analysis was originally developed as a quality control tool, but you can use the technique just as well in other ways. For instance, you can use it to:

• Discover the root cause of a problem.
• Uncover bottlenecks in your processes.
• Identify where and why a process isn’t working

How to Use the Tool

Follow these steps to solve a problem with Cause and Effect Analysis:

 

Step 1: Identify the Problem

First, write down the exact problem you face. Where appropriate, identify who is involved, what the problem is, and when and where it occurs.

Then, write the problem in a box on the left-hand side of a large sheet of paper, and draw a line across the paper horizontally from the box. This arrangement, looking like the head and spine of a fish, gives you space to develop ideas.

 

Example:

In this simple example, a manager is having problems with an uncooperative branch office. 

 

Tip 1:
Some people prefer to write the problem on the right-hand side of the piece of paper, and develop ideas in the space to the left. Use whichever approach you feel most comfortable with.

Tip 2:
It’s important to define your problem correctly. CATWOE can help you do this – this asks you to look at the problem from the perspective of Customers, Actors in the process, the Transformation process, the overall World view, the process Owner, and Environmental constraints.

By considering all of these, you can develop a comprehensive understanding of the problem.

Step 2: Work Out the Major Factors Involved

Next, identify the factors that may be part of the problem. These may be systems, equipment, materials, external forces, people involved with the problem, and so on.

Try to draw out as many of these as possible. As a starting point, you can use models such as the McKinsey 7S Framework (which offers you Strategy, Structure, Systems, Shared values, Skills, Style and Staff as factors that you can consider) or the 4Ps of Marketing (which offers Product, Place, Price, and Promotion as possible factors).

Brainstorm any other factors that may affect the situation.

Then draw a line off the “spine” of the diagram for each factor, and label each line.

 

Example:

The manager identifies the following factors, and adds these to his diagram:

• Site.
• Task.
• People.
• Equipment.
• Control.

Step 3: Identify Possible Causes

Now, for each of the factors you considered in step 2, brainstorm possible causes of the problem that may be related to the factor.

Show these possible causes as shorter lines coming off the “bones” of the diagram. Where a cause is large or complex, then it may be best to break it down into sub-causes. Show these as lines coming off each cause line.

Example:

For each of the factors he identified in step 2, the manager brainstorms possible causes of the problem, and adds these to his diagram, as shown in figure 3.

Step 4: Analyze Your Diagram

By this stage you should have a diagram showing all of the possible causes of the problem that you can think of.

Depending on the complexity and importance of the problem, you can now investigate the most likely causes further. This may involve setting up investigations, carrying out surveys, and so on. These will be designed to test which of these possible causes is actually contributing to the problem.

Example:

The manager has now finished his Cause and Effect Analysis. If he hadn’t looked at the problem this way, he might have dealt with it by assuming that people in the branch office were “being difficult.”

Instead he thinks that the best approach is to arrange a meeting with the Branch Manager. This would allow him to brief the manager fully on the new strategy, and talk through any problems that she may be experiencing. 

 

Tip:
A useful way to use Cause and Effect Analysis with a team is to write all of the possible causes of the problem down on sticky notes. You can then group similar ones together on the diagram.

This approach is sometimes called CEDAC (Cause and Effect Diagram with Additional Cards) and was developed by Dr. Ryuji Fukuda, a Japanese expert on continuous improvement. 

 

Key Points

Professor Kaoru Ishikawa created Cause & Effect Analysis in the 1960s. The technique uses a diagram-based approach for thinking through all of the possible causes of a problem. This helps you to carry out a thorough analysis of the situation.

There are four steps to using Cause and Effect Analysis.

1. Identify the problem.
2. Work out the major factors involved.
3. Identify possible causes.
4. Analyze your diagram.

Try using Cause and Effect Analysis – you’ll find that they are particularly useful when you’re trying to solve complicated problems,

Take it from        http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMC_03.htm

This is the easiest tool to help you to analyze the problems in a company, process or any daily bases in an industrial engineer’s life.

 

With this tool you can determinate what are the important causes in a problem, or identified what the problem is, and find which causes are more important to solve in every aspect.

Read all the steps that I post, I found this article really helpful and complete to learn how to used this wonderful tool.

 

By Johanna Delgado Porras

ERGONOMIC

Ergonomics is a multidisciplinary science that uses other sciences such as medicine work, physiology, sociology and anthropometry. The term is derived from the Greek ergo (work), nomos (laws of nature or knowledge or study). Literally work study. We can also define it as the study of the interaction of people with their activities, equipment, tools and the physical environment, designed to improve quality, productivity, safety and health in the workplace

 At the industry level we also find a definition of “systematic study of relationship between workers and workstation. By applying information about human characteristics (physical, mental, possibilities and limitations) to the design of workstations, seeking to adapt operators to ensure that operations are conducted with safety, comfort, without error, without undue fatigue and the result is a more effective and efficient.

In summary, the basic definitions and criteria indicated above can the following:

• Employers must ensure that workstations are adapted to the human characteristics of the worker and not the reverse.

• The ergonomics and remember we must consider individual differences and the ability of each person to suit the environment.

• Improving the ergonomics of work stations to improve the quality and productivity of the company since it decreases the errors in the process; in addition, workers perform their work more motivated, in a more pleasant and comfortable.

• The implementation of ergonomic principles also has a positive effect on health and safety of workers as it reduces the distractions that can cause accidents and they reduce musculoskeletal injuries, physical fatigue and mental.Inadequate ergonomic conditions can cause musculoskeletal injuries when humans abuse their capabilities in a particular activity or correct weaknesses in design work. The risk factor can be of two types: individual and occupational.

  At the individual level depends on each person’s capacity of tolerance and resistance to the different elements that can cause an accident or illness. In other words, these factors derived from organic functioning, habits or customs the people who would not be controlled or minimized, can affect their health and productivity at work. Some variables are: sex, weight, physical resilience and mental quality of life (food, exercise), age, height, heredity, injury or disability incurred in the current job or as well as in everyday life. Occupational levels there are factors that may affect the individual health in the medium and long term. Some situations are repetitive actions or movements, awkward body postures or deficient, body postures, static muscle force or overuse, direct pressure, risk factors in the workplace such as exposure to noise, vibration, extreme temperatures (hot or cold) , lighting, radiation, chemical, biological, and finally the organization of work

For control of risk factors is important to know and apply the Principles of Ergonomics

1. Keep everything at
2. Perform the work according to the correct height
3. Gripping the shape reduces the effort
4. Find the right posture for each work
5. Reduce excessive repetition
6. Minimize fatigue
7. Minimize direct pressure
8. Adjustment and change of position
9. Provide spaces and access
10. Maintain a comfortable working environment
11. Improve understanding of the signs, displays and controls
12. Improve the organization of workLikewise, criteria for prevention and control of ergonomic hazards at engineering and administrative

1. Modifications of the job
2. Getting different computer or modern tool change
3. Improved working conditions
4. Preventive maintenance for equipment, machinery and tools
5. Rotation of workers.
6. Increased frequency and length of breaks.
7. Training for all employees in different positions for proper rotation.
8. Improved techniques work.
9. Fitness for employees.
10. Limit-time workload.
11. Implementation of an ergonomics program
12. Analysis of the job.
13. Medical Management
14. Training and education.

 

Chávez Donoso S. (1999) Re Pensando la Seguridad como ventaja competitiva. Segunda edición Imprenta MYRG. San José Costa Rica.

 

By Guillermo Lopez

WHO IS SAFETY IMPORTANT?

Every time I read or hear of an accident I keep asking about the importance of safety. And that question has been an avalanche of them.
But more often turns out to be relevant: Who is safety important?
And here are many people like business managers, area managers, supervisors of operations and the workers themselves.

Take one by one.

The directors of companies:
Have a legal responsibility to provide a safe environment to prevent the occurrence of accidents. They are those who approve policies dictate the rules to be complied with and give instructions to those who must enforce them in day to day.
Additionally should the resources to ensure that all the above is feasible and the entire organization can practice it. And all must meet the fundamental principle of business: to be profitable in its financial results.
If the financial results are not met for any reason, the manager will direct. And this does not exclude that the results are negative for the damage in a plant, equipment or misfortune of a fate that also costs a lot in economic terms and imaging. Clearly, for a security manager must be important.

The department heads:
They are responsible for the daily events of their business. It is they who are in constant touch with what is happening and should support the director in making the rules and policies are followed properly.
They must manage time and resources for the operation to flow seamlessly, know and follow all the parameters of the operation.
If this does not happen, these leaders do not do the work area. They are basic planning and unscheduled outages are unacceptable. Hence the value of their interest.

Supervisors:
Are those in the task. Checking that nothing out of control and that all are coordinated. They are the ones who should make the conditions and actions of people are appropriate for the task. They live and live, are those who look after a good performance.
A flaw in them can derail the plan, and temporarily or permanently lose a worker in charge. Their interest cannot be clearer.

Workers:
Are those carrying it out; of its work depends the operation, but mostly for themselves and their own integrity. Estadísiticamente, the workers who suffer more accidents.

Types Of Electrical Accidents. Safety And Prevention (2012). Electrical Accidents. Safety And Prevention. retrieved on February 24, 2012 from  www.safetymanagementgroup.co... - Estados Unidos

OIL SPILL

Major Hazards Health and Safety

Symptoms of exposure:

Workers should be encouraged to report all symptoms, near misses, injuries and diseases. These notices must be analyzed to assess trends in real time in order to take measures to prevent similar incidents.

Reported symptoms of overexposure to oil or dispersants usually are:

• Irritation of eyes, nose and throat

• Headache

• Dizziness

• Upset stomach

• Cough or shortness of breath

Heat Stress and Sun Exposure:

Workers involved in the work of spill response Deepwater Horizon are at high risk of getting a disease caused by heat, which:

• can cause heat stroke, heat exhaustion or heat cramps and fainting.

• may increase the risk of injury by having the sweaty palms, fogged safety glasses and dizziness.

• be considered in the selection of protective clothing and other personal protective equipment.

Among workers with increased risk of heat illness include those that:

• 65 years of age or older

• are overweight, heart disease or high blood pressure

• taking medications that may be affected by extreme heat

A program to prevent heat illness must include the following:

• Information for workers about the effects of heat illness and how to recognize symptoms of heat-related illnesses and prevent diseases caused by heat.

• Acclimatization of new workers or workers who return to work after being absent for three or more days.

• Specific procedures to follow in case of emergencies associated with the heat.

• Prepare to administer immediate first aid to workers who have symptoms of heat-related illnesses.

• Plans to contemplate and reduce the demand for physical strain on workers.

• System mapping substitutions or more workers for tasks that require much physical effort.

• Supply of fresh water to the workers avoiding caffeinated drinks, alcohol or large amounts of sugar.

• Special systems of work and rest according to the physical demands and environmental conditions associated with heat.

• Scheduling of work to match the cooler temperatures of the day and night.

• cool and shaded areas for use during breaks.

• System of pairs of colleagues to be aware of the mutual security and be alert to signs of heat illness.

NIOSH Quick Facts: Protect from heat stress

DHHS (NIOSH) Publication No. 2010-114

NIOSH Quick Facts: Protect yourself from sun exposure

DHHS (NIOSH) Publication No. 2010-116

The decision to use respiratory protection should be based on the best available qualitative information and expert opinion on the working methods and the most comprehensive qualitative information is available about the type and level of inhalation exposure to toxic substances and physical elements. The use of effective engineering controls and administrative and other personal protective equipment must be implemented before considering the use of respirators to protect workers.

Training and protection of response personnel

Employers must train staff to respond to oil spills in relation to potential hazards and safe work practices to prevent and control these hazards. Must be provided to all workers tools, machinery, personal protective equipment (PPE) and protective clothing to do their jobs. You must train workers in the care and proper use of this equipment. The personal protective equipment should be chosen based on the identified risks, their protective properties (such as resistance to oil) and their level of fitness for the task. Should be implemented as soon as possible a system of health surveillance and occupational injuries. It is necessary to stress the importance of immediately reporting injuries and illnesses that occur.

Updates oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico

Local governments, state and federal are mobilizing their efforts to assist containment and cleanup of oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. This website provides information resources on the protection of workers from the risks of the activities of oil spill response. This page will be updated as more information becomes available about the safety and health of workers involved in response activities.

Page last updated: February 18, 2011

Page last reviewed: January 3, 2012

Content Source: National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)

Education and Information Division

By Joselyn Solis

GANTT CHART

How to make a simple Gantt chart…?

 13 SEPTEMBER 2011 BY JONATHAN O’DONNELL

Make a list of everything that you plan to do in the project. Take your methodology and turn it into a step-by-step plan. Have you said that you will interview 50 people? Write it on your list.  Are you performing statistical analysis on your sample?  Write it down.

In every grant application, I want to see a simple visual guide (a Gantt chart) that shows what you are planning to do. It is the perfect time to plan your project clearly. It shows the assessors that you have thought about your research in detail and, if it is done well, it can serve as a great, convincing overview of the project. Clearly, these charts are hard to do. If they were easy, more people would do them, right?

Here are five steps to create a simple guide to your research project.

 1. List your activities

Check it against your budget. Everything listed in the budget should also be listed on your uber-list? Have you asked for a Thingatron? Note down that you will need to buy it, install it, commission it… What about travel? Write down each trip separately.

2. Estimate the time required

For each item on your list, estimate how long it will take you to do that thing. How long are you going to be in the field? How long will it take to employ a research assistant? Realistically, how many interviews can you do in a day? When will people be available?

• Initial meeting: about 3 weeks to find a time.
• Desk audit: 4 weeks.
• Draft key elements: about 1 week each.
• Testing: about 1 week each, but can start organising as soon as first element is drafted.
• Write up: 2 weeks.
• Final report: no time, really – just need to find a time to meet.

Generally, I use weeks to estimate time. Anything that takes less than a week I round off to a week. Small tasks like that will generally disappear from the list when we consolidate (see Step 4).

3. Put activities in order

What is the first thing that you are going to do?  What will you do next? What will you do after that?

In the comments, Adrian Masters provided some great questions to help with this stage:

• What do I need to do by when?
• What do I need from others & when?
• How do I check that I am still on track?

One by one, put everything in order. Make a note of any dependencies; that is, situations where you can’t do one thing until another is started or finished. If the research assistant is going to do all the interviews, then the interviews can’t start until the research assistant is hired.

Where possible, you should eliminate as many as possible dependencies. For example, if you can’t find a decent research assistant, you will do the fieldwork yourself (but that might mean that work will be delayed until you finish teaching). It isn’t a necessary step to getting your time-line in order, but it is good project management practice.

4. Chunk it up

Now that you have an ordered list, and you know how long everything will take, you need to reduce the list without losing any specificity. At the same time, if you are combining tasks, you might want to add a bit of time as a contingency measure.

1. Meet with partners: 3 weeks.
2. Review data protection regimes: 4 weeks.
3. Draft three key elements: 3 weeks.
4. Test three key elements: 3 weeks, with some overlap.
5. Analyse test results and report: 3 weeks.

How you divide up your time depends on your project. If it is only one year long, you might list items by month. If your project is three years long, then you might list items by quarter. If you are planning over five years, you might break it down to six-month periods.

5. Draw me a picture

If you use project management software to manage your project, and you are comfortable with it, then use it to produce a summary of your project, too.

Most project management software (e.g. like Microsoft Project) will allow you to group activities into summary items. Chunk your tasks into major headings, then change the time interval to your months, quarters, half-years, or whatever you have chosen to use. Or you can just draw it up with word-processing software (which is what I always do), spreadsheet software, or even hand-draw it.

Take it from   http://theresearchwhisperer.wordpress.com/2011/09/13/gantt-chart/

As you can see, this tool is so helpful for any project that you need to managed, time is the most important factor that you have to take care when you are running a project, with this tool you can schedule every activity, for you and even your partners to accomplish on time with all the little steps to finish successfully on time. So, every industrial engineer, need to get the knowledge to learn to use tools like this one, to perform the tasks in a convenient and competitive way. Go ahead and practice how to be using this helpful diagram.

by Johanna Delgado Porras

PSYCHOSOCIAL RISKS

All work implies, for the person involved, a set of physical and psychological requirements, the former are called and the second physical load, mental load. Both physical and mental load are a function of various observable characteristics of the job characteristics that are risk factors associated with the work.

Psychosocial risk factors constitute one of the issues that require more thought in modern times, considering the consequences of economic globalization and accelerating the transformation of production processes and the current trend towards the actualization of labor, characterized primarily with the extension of the days, no breaks recovery sacrifice of vacation periods and poor working conditions. Must be understood as any condition that man experiences as it relates to its surroundings and the society around him, so does not constitute a risk but so far that it becomes harmful to the welfare the individual or when unbalanced relationship with the work or the environment
  Every day, there are many manifestations of fatigue, impaired health, absenteeism and desmotivation product of the demands of society, and especially with regard to the workplace, subject to constant changes in the organization and arising from work, has facilitated the dissemination and popularization of a term that, in a generic way stress is defined. The lack of fit between the person and the environment can lead to various types of responses in subjects. On a psychological level, may involve job dissatisfaction, anxiety, or insomnia complaints. On a physiological level, may involve high blood pressure or increased cholesterol levels and behavior may involve increases in behavior related to smoking, eating, drinking or more visits to the doctor. Rather a good fit will have positive results in relation to the welfare and personal development.

The following are major psychosocial stressors at work will depend on the appreciation that person makes of the situation, vulnerability to stress and individual characteristics, and individual coping strategies, group and organizational.

By Guillermo Lopez