The advantage of situational operational leeway in the identification of Musculoskeletal Disorders risk situations

The Musculoskeletal Disorder (MSD) risk assessment tools currently used in industries to identify critical situations have shown biases related to the variability of results. The validity and reliability of targeting risk situations with these simple tools are questionable, which might bias the orientation given to the prevention of MSD. This study explores known indicators regarding MSD risk assessment together with notions of regulation and situational operational leeway (SOL). In a sample of selected work situations in the metallurgy industry, we therefore compared the SOL indicators using two semi-quantitative and qualitative methods to determine the level of SOL sufficiency for each situation. The results of these two methods show differences in judgment. These methods nevertheless provide additional information that complement simple MSD risk assessment tools. We propose ways to improve semi-quantitative methods to target critical situations as from the MSD risk assessment phase.