Measurement of Work-Related Physical Workloads - Proposal for a Body Region-Related Categorization System

In this article a proposal for categorization of measurement systems for recording and assessing of work-related musculoskeletal workloads and disorders (MSD) for body region-related risk assessments is presented. It consists of three categories according to the different user groups: operational practitioner (Cat 1), ergonomic expert (Cat 2) and scientist (Cat 3). Principal characteristics of measuring systems in the categories 1, 2 and 3 are derived from common measurement setups and application cases. For the body regions upper extremities, spine, lower extremities implementations for the associated risk factors, measurement technique and parameters as well as assessment approaches are presented.