Abstract
The evaluation of physical tasks in terms of fatigue has often been based on their effect on the “average man,” thus serving to protect only half of the population from excessive fatigue. The concept of group work capacity is proposed as a technique for task evaluation which includes the entire population. It is defined as the percentage of workers that can perform a task without showing physiological signs of fatigue. An experiment that investigates 30 different lifting tasks is described. Thirty subjects were used, and group work capacity was estimated for each task by three different methods. The application of the results to industrial situations is discussed.
