The ART Tool: An good option for assessing repetitive tasks

Does your company have tasks that require repetitive motion of the arms and hands?  Do you know if those tasks are hazardous to your worker's health?  In other words, have you assessed the risk factors?  If your company has had one or more workers injured then you know you have a problem, but do you know what part of the task is the greatest source of the issue?  In either case I highly suggest you take the time and effort to assess the risk because repetitive motion injuries can be very costly.  In fact they are the most costly work comp injury type.  So don't wait for your work comp to spiral out of control--take control by assessing the risk and then, if needed, do something about it.

     So, how do you assess the risk?  One way would be hire an ergonomics consultant like myself do the assessment.  But let's say you want to do it yourself.  Is there a tool(s) out there that you could use?  Yes, there are tools that you can find online that are free to use.  You need to be mindful of the application, pros/cons and strengths/weaknesses of the tool.  Here's one tool that assesses repetitive motion:  The ART tool.

      Have you heard of the ART Tool?  No?  If you were an EHS professional in the UK you probably would be familiar with it but it’s not commonly known in the US.  The ART (Assessment of Repetitive Tasks) Tool was developed by the UK’s Health and Safety Executive (HSE).  You can think of the HSE as the OSHA of the UK, a governmental body devoted to the health and safety of UK workers.  The HSE website has a few useful tools to help assess the risk factors of different tasks.  The ART Tool is one component of their “MSD toolkit” which contains two other tools: 

·        MAC Tool (Manual handling assessment chart):  It is somewhat comparable to the NIOSH lifting equation but also very different as it includes carrying, team handling and other environmental factors into its calculation.  This is a nice option to use when a task/job combines lifting, carrying and/or more than one person performing material handling.

·        Pushing and Pulling Risk Assessment:  The HSE provides guidelines on safe push/pull forces and if you feel that your pushing and pulling operations exceed the guideline figures or any of the other criteria provided then you can use their risk assessment  checklist to assess it further.  This assessment checklist goes much more in depth compared to Liberty Mutual’s Push/pull guidelines and tool.

I find both of the above to be a nice companion and/or option to the commonly known risk assessment tools used in the US.

    The ART Tool is most suited for "tasks that involve the use of the arms, repeat every few minutes or more frequently; and occur for at least 1-2 hours per shift".  Similar to RULA and REBA, this is not intended for computer workstation assessments.  The ART has 3 features: 

1.      Assessment guide:  provides information about how to use the tool, the risk factors and assessment criteria

2.      Flow chart: provides an overview of the assessment process

3.      Task description form and score sheet: provides a place to record information about the task as well as the finding of the assessment. 

     The assessment can look at one or both arms and takes into consideration frequency/repetition of movements, force, awkward postures and additional factors (i.e. breaks, work pace, psychosocial factors and others).  The purpose of using the ART Tool, and for any risk assessment tool, is to identify significant risks and then take corrective action to reduce the level of risk in the task.

     The nice thing about all of the HSE tools mentioned is that for each tool they have videos available to watch in which you can practice scoring.  You can then compare your score with the right score to see if you did it correctly and if not, be able to see where you made a wrong calculation.  This is very helpful for new users to speed up the learning process.

     If you don't feel comfortable, don't have the expertise, don't have the time to assess the risk then give us a call.  We're here to help to keep your work comp costs down and your workers productive.