ABSTRACT
Appropriate work-rest scheduling is of great importance to reduce adverse effects of cumulative fatigue from physical work, to maintain workers physical conditions for manual handling operations, and to provide a safer working environment for the prevention of work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSD). It is believed that, to accomplish the same physical task, different individual workers may perform differently, and furthermore they have different fatigue progressions and post-work recoveries as well due to individual fatigue-related attributes. In this paper, a new work-rest allowance model is proposed based on a theoretical local muscle fatigue and recovery model. This new work-rest allowance model is compared with the other four existing allowance models, and effects from individual attributes on work-rest allowance are discussed. It is promising that the work rest allowance model enables us assign physical tasks for individual worker appropriately.
