Personnel training for safer material handling

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Abstract
There are three ergonomic approaches for making ‘manual material handling’ (MMH) as safe and efficient as possible: personnel training and selection fit the worker to the job, work design fits the job to the person. The three strategies are highly related because both job demands and related human capabilities must be known in order to match them. All three strategies should be successful if properly applied. Unfortunately, few scientifically-reliable data exist to support this premise for personnel training; partly because there may be very different training objectives and procedures suitable for different MMH situations. Furthermore, the state of knowledge in biomechanics and physiology does not provide clear and generally applicable guidelines about suitable use of the body, not even for lifting. Evaluation of the success of past training approaches is very difficult because of the general lack of experimental design and control in most studies. In this contribution, an attempt is made to order the topics and procedures used in personnel training to identify research issues, and—by implication—to plead for demonstrations of practically successful training techniques.

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