Last week, Ergonomics Plus was featured on Inside Indiana Business with Gerry Dick. In this short, 3-minute segment you’ll get an inside look at how an Indiana manufacturer (Juno Lighting Group) has achieved “world-class” status as the result of a comprehensive ergonomics and MSD prevention process.
Take a look …
Video Transcript
Gerry Dick: In this month’s healthy workforce segment, we zero in on the business of ergonomics and how best practices have helped a Hamilton County manufacturer reach world-class status.
Mark Middlesworth (Ergonomics Plus founder and President): Perhaps you’ve heard the quote from Dr. Burkett; he says, “if people are constantly falling off a cliff, you can put an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff or you can build a fence at the top.”
Our business is founded upon the simple principle that prevention is better than treatment.
Ergonomics is the science of designing the workplace keeping in mind the capabilities and limitations of the human body. It’s really about the interface of people with the work process.
The enemy of ergonomics is musculoskeletal disorders. So ergonomics seeks to reduce risk factors that can lead people to develop fatigue and discomfort that can lead to musculoskeletal disorders.
We partner with our clients to build a strong fence. And a strong fence means taking away all the risk factors associated with musculoskeletal disorders.
I started with Juno Lighting Group here in Fishers in 2006.
Shawn Young (Plant Manager, Juno Lighting Group): We are a manufacturer of commercial and industrial lighting fixtures. So lots of national accounts like Macy’s, department stores, grocery stores, schools. Right now what’s really popular is LED lighting. That’s really taking off. A lot of companies are changing out their lighting to the LEDs.
We also do HID and fluorescent lighting. There is some display lighting, but mostly ceiling lighting.
About seven years ago, we just felt like we had gone as far as we could go with our safety committee. We did have a fairly high incident rate. Mostly the musculoskeletal disorders and discomfort, so carpal tunnel, tennis elbow, trigger finger and things related to that.
We realized we needed to be more aggressive with our initiatives, and that’s when we reached out to Mark Middlesworth (Ergonomics Plus) to bring ergonomics into the building as a consultant.
Mark Middlesworth: I make my rounds on the shop floor to make sure that I am seen by the employees who I’ve encouraged to let me know if they’re having a problem with fatigue and discomfort or pain or anything like that.
So a weekly presence out on the work floor is extremely important, but we’re constantly doing ergonomic opportunity evaluations and improvements.
We’re constantly doing education and training.
We’re constantly doing early intervention.
Shawn Young: The biggest benefit is over the last seven years, our medical incident rate has decreased by, I would say, 80%. We used to be fairly high. Now our medical incident rate is what they would consider world-class, and I believe the ergonomic initiatives that we’ve brought in with Mark have had the biggest impact on that.
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