Research the previous 1 to 2 years of ergonomic related injury data (Cumulative Trauma Disorders and Strain/Sprains).

Interview managers, engineers, workers, and other applicable personnel regarding known ergonomic issues.

Develop plan of action to address issues/hazards. All management concerns should be addressed, however most of the assessment will involve assessing issues that are not known to management.

Schedule and coordinate the assessment. Insure that all work content will be observed and assessed.

Perform the ergonomic assessment. Utilize the Pocket Ergo checklists to help guide the assessment. Obtain objective measurements of ergonomic issues (forces/weights, postures, frequencies, light levels, etc.). Utilize the tools in Pocket Ergo to assess measurements. Ergonomic reference books will also be needed.

Document issues/hazards (task description, description of ergonomic issues, pictures of issues, worker input, and solution/design recommendation ideas). Interview employees to gather their improvement ideas.

Verify that all tasks associated with the job have been observed/assessed. If it is not feasible to observe all tasks, review task processes && procedures, and interview workers for assessment input.

Set a meeting to discuss assessment findings with operations and management and solicit additional commentary. If possible, propose solution ideas. Assign owners to close each issue/hazard. Use pictures to help communicate issues.

Prioritize issues/hazards. Assign a Low, Medium, or High risk to each issue (or use other established company prioritization definitions). If there were 20 issues found during the assessment, insure that they are prioritized 1 through 20.

Research and develop short term and long term corrective actions for each issue/hazard. Analyze solutions for Return On Investment (ROI). Propose solutions to owners.

Implement all short-term solutions within one month (if feasible). Establish commit dates for long term corrective actions.

Distribute the completed ergonomic assessment report (or a summary of issues && recommendations) to management. If possible, it is highly recommended that you enter all ergonomic issues/hazards and the proposed solutions in a database and track each issue to closure.

Manage the closure of all issues. Some issues will be closed with no action (not feasible to correct). But minimize the number of issues closed for this reason.

Test and evaluate implemented controls and designs to verify that the control reduced or eliminated the risk and that additional risks were not introduced. Implement additional corrective actions as necessary and re-assess.