The following illustrations included in this report are reproduced through the courtesy of: “Dodge Idea ”— designed by F. B. Gilbreth. Fig. 1. Fig. 2. New York Telephone Company. Fig. 13. Fig. 15. Barnet Phillips Company - designed by American Posture League. - Fig. 21. Fig. 22. "Scientific American Monthly "-designed by E. E. Barney. Fig. 29. Fig. 30. Fig. 31. Olga S. Halsey Richmond Chase Canning Company. INTRODUCTORY In presenting this report on Industrial Posture and Seating, the Bureau of Women in Industry makes no pretense that it is saying the final word. In fact, there is no final word to be said, at the present time. Like many details of industrial management, more is unknown than is known. The study was undertaken with the idea of gathering together experiences and designs from those who had given the matter serious consideration. The Bureau communicated with every known source of help: Federal and State Labor Departments, Employers' Associations, Trade Unions, health and safety organizations, physicians, safety engineers, foremen, workers and employers. All these contributed most generously to the compilation of this material; without their help, this report would have been impossible. Starting with the concrete idea of collecting the best possible designs for chairs for industrial workers, the Bureau soon realized that the problem was in reality a question of eliminating, in 30 far as possible, the fatigue which comes from bad posture, or from continuously working in one position. The report, then, resolves itself into a discussion of one of the preventable causes of fatigue — namely, bad posture in industry. Lack of imagination is responsible for much bad seating. Custom has decreed the way in which many operations are performed. There has been next to no effort to scientifically "fit the work to the worker," except where industrial engineers have realized that unnecessary fatigue is needless loss, and that in order to reduce fatigue, work must be physiologically balanced. It was impossible to use in this report many designs for chairs and work benches which were submitted to the Bureau, but these will be furnished gladly to anyone who is attempting to work out a satisfactory seating arrangement for a particular process. The Bureau wishes to acknowledge the help given by the Bureau of Factory Inspection, and the Bureau of Industrial Hygiene of the New York State Industrial Commission. The great obligation of the Bureau is to Mr. Frank B. Gilbreth and Mr. Reynold A. Spaeth, who have given generously of their experience and material for this report. Their criticisms and suggestions have been invaluable. The report was prepared by Edith Hilles and Wilhelmina Conger of the staff of the Bureau of Women in Industry. NELLE SWARTZ, Chief. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS The conclusions reached by this report are First: that posture must be varied. Continuous sitting and continuous standing are both harmful. Ideally, conditions should allow the worker to vary his position at will, because of the rest and the enormous saving of energy that comes from a change of position during working hours. Second: that work conditions should be such that correct posture is possible. a. By providing a physiologically good chair. b. By insuring a proper relationship of the different parts of the work place. There is no one chair that is best for all industrial processes. To determine what chair is best for a particular process, the nature of the work to be done, the position of supplies and finished work, the equip ment at hand, i. e. the height of bench, chair, place for foot rest, etc., as well as the height of the individual worker all these must be considered. To provide a good chair is not enough; the important thing is to bring all parts of the work place into the best possible relationship. PART I POSTURE IN INDUSTRY FATIGUE AND POSTURE "A seat that never wears out" is the slogan that sells a certain make of round-top factory stool. If the truth were told the "ad" might read: "The seat that wears the worker out." It is because of the study of fatigue in industry the study of the factors “wearing the worker out"— that we have come to recognize the importance of a good position at work. There is no doubt that bad. posture reduces the worker unnecessarily quickly to a fagged condition in which his hand moves with less accuracy and his mind wanders from his job. Fatigue produced by such a cause is in large measure preventable. Fatigue is the natural result of work and shows itself in a diminished capacity for doing work. It clogs the wheels of the human. machine. But the body is so constructed that it purifies itself during rest, when the poisons that clog its bearings are carried off and a balance between action and repair is kept. The problem, then, is to keep fatigue in check, to allow the body to maintain a balance between breakdown and repair. That a balance between breakdown and repair is not ordinarily kept during the work day is indicated by production and accident statistics. Output studies have shown that as a general rule, production "increases rapidly during the early part of the forenoon, declines toward the noon hour; increases to a lesser maximum after luncheon, then falls to a low minimum at the end of the day's work." Fatigue ought to be avoided like poison, because, in reality, it is poison. To anticipate fatigue, to check it (by change or by rest) before its poisons slow down the body, is one of the problems before the scientific manager, or, as he is often called, the engineer of industrial economy. The study of fatigue is not a theoretical or academic matter, it is a matter of dollars and cents, because fatigue affects output as directly as it affects the physical organism of the worker. Work done after fatigue has set in is wasteful because it not only costs more effort and requires increasingly longer periods of rest for recuperation, but it accomplishes less. In a pamphlet published by the United States Public Health Service on "How Industrial Fatigue may be Reduced," fatigue is regarded as the "greatest single obstacle to maximum output." Four out of eleven ways outlined by this pamphlet to reduce fatigue, deal directly with posture. This is but an indication of the importance which is being attached, as a result of scientific study, to something which a few years ago was regarded as a trifle or mere detail. That the arrangement of the work place to enable good posture has anything whatever to do with the worker's efficiency is not yet a widespread idea, although production men are beginning to regard good posture in the light of increasing production. To stoop continually to get supplies from a box on the floor is tiring, and it is a comparatively simple matter to put the supplies nearer the bench top. To sit all day on a stool with one's feet dangling in the air is also tiring, and yet these and other obviously bad conditions exist, causing fatigue, which is entirely unnecessary and therefore is sheer waste. Output can be materially increased by a slight adjustment, replacement or rearrangement a chair or workbench may be too high or too low the chair may have an uncomfortable seat. Some rearrangement of these so-called trifles has made increased production possible in many industrial plants. There is a right and a wrong way of doing everything; a right and a wrong way of handling tools and operating a machine. Sometimes learning the right way determines the difference between a skilled and unskilled workman; more often, the right way can be achieved through some simple adjustment of working conditions in the factory which have gone unnoticed through lack of imagination in fitting in old equipment to new conditions. The truth is that our inventive genius has played with machines, and let workers fit themselves to machines as best they could. Most machines are designed so that seating is impossible. Braces and legs cut off knee space and the operator must sit if she attempts to sit with knees crowded under or jammed against the bench, and feet screwed around the rungs of the chair or dangling uncomfortably. The operator may become so tired from work in such a position that her attention flags and she does her work badly or perhaps meets with an accident, but the machine goes on running because no trouble or expense has been spared that it should run smoothly. "In the modern factory the science of machinery is developed to its highest point. In the selection, construction and use of machinery nothing is left to chance. Its type is selected in accordance with its exact fitness for the work demanded of it. It is constructed of appropriate materials, and is so designed as to avoid lost motion and the waste of energy involved and to allow the highest possible proportion of the total energy that is transformed to perform the work required. It is kept clean, unnecessary friction is avoided, and every care is taken that its bearings 1 United States. Public Health Service. How industrial fatigue may be reduced. Reprint No. 482, Public Health Service. Washington, Govt. 1918. H |