Influence of Work Pace on Upper Extremity Kinematics and Muscle Activity in a Short-Cycle Repetitive Pick-and-Place Task

Objectives: This study investigated the extent to which controlled changes in work pace in a cyclic pick-and-place task influence upper extremity kinematics and muscle activity, and whether an effect depends on working height. Methods: Thirteen participants performed the task for 4 min at each of five work paces ranging from 8 to 12 cycles·min-1...

Influence of Posture Variation on Shoulder Muscle Activity, Heart Rate, and Perceived Exertion in a Repetitive Manual Task

Occupational applications. In repetitive work, more physical variation is believed to reduce the risk of eventually developing musculoskeletal disorders. We investigated the extent to which workstation designs leading to more variation in upper arm postures during a pick-and-place task influenced outcomes of relevance to musculoskeletal disorder...

Is rotating between static and dynamic work beneficial for our fatigue state?

Shoulder disorders comprise a large part of work-related musculoskeletal disorders. Risk factors, such as repetitiveness and monotony, may cause muscle fatigue and be attenuated by task rotation. We investigated rotation between a dynamic box-lifting task and a relatively static pick-and-place task and aimed to determine whether (1) a high...

Task variation during simulated, repetitive, low-intensity work – influence on manifestation of shoulder muscle fatigue, perceived discomfort and upper-body postures

Work-related musculoskeletal disorders are increasing due to industrialisation of work processes. Task variation has been suggested as potential intervention. The objectives of this study were to investigate, first, the influence of task variation on electromyographic (EMG) manifestations of shoulder muscle fatigue and discomfort; second,...

The influence of task variation on manifestation of fatigue is ambiguous: A literature review

Task variation has been proposed to reduce shoulder fatigue resulting from repetitive hand-arm tasks. This review analyses the effect of task variation, both 'temporal (i.e. change of work-rest ratio)' and 'activity (i.e. job rotation)' variation, on physiological responses, endurance time (ET) and subjective feelings. Pubmed was searched and...