Transport and Mining Machinery Foot Controls: Safety and Human Factors View

Abstract

Extremely rare research has been carried out related to the assessment of the anthropometric convenience of transport and mining machinery cabins and its human-centered design. The importance of studying this problem largely exceeds the number of published works. Despite today's the risk awareness, incidents in heavy machinery operations have not substantially decreased. Transport and mining machinery operators’ job is very demanding since high precision is needed and they remain in cabins during almost the whole shift. Inadequate shape and dimensions of control devices, their inadequate arrangement in the cabin, as well as mismatch of the forces required to activate the control devices with the anthropometric characteristics of the operator, have an impact on the quality of the performance of the work task and overall safety. Foot controls are of special importance, so aim of this paper was to examine and compare transport and mining machinery operators’ height and weight and foot controls ergonomics convenience. Samples of 31 transport machinery and 65 mining machinery operators working in Serbian and Montengrin companies were examined. Descriptive statistics included sample sizes, mean values, median, minimum and maximum, range, standard deviation and coefficient of variation expressed in percentages. In cases when the coefficient of variation is greater than 30%, the variable is inhomogeneous, thus non-parametric statistics is used. Otherwise, the Kolmogorov test for normality was additionally conducted, where the d test values and p values for the Kolmogorov test were given. Comparison of operators’ height and weight have not shown differences found between transport and mining machinery. Descriptive statistics regarding vibrations feeling through the foot controls and its easiness to be reached and used/controlled of both transport and mining machinery has been done and although slightly lower values are obtained from mining machinery operators, statistically significant differences have not been found, too. The last data that was compared between operators of transport and mining machinery are injuries at work, for which proportions were used, where it was shown that 16,129% of operators of transport machinery had injuries, while that number among operators of mining machinery was 13,846%. The comparison again showed that this difference is not statistically significant, given that the p-level of the test is 0.7205. Later on, failures and stoppages of both types of machinery are collected and analyzed and Pareto diagrams are given, where completely different causes are evident in the field of “vital few” causes. Anyhow, since statistically proved facts show that there are no differences regarding safety and human factors issues it could be indicated to designers that there is the possibility of applying the same innovative solutions to both types of mechanization in the field of foot controls. Further collection and analysis of anthropometric dimensions is recommended as future research avenue.