Musculoskeletal problems of hand-sewn crafted footwear manufacturing artisans in Kolhapur, India.

BACKGROUND

Kolhapuri hand-sewn crafted footwear is one of the well-designed and traditional footwear in India. Many of the processes in these industries are manual. The study was carried out to establish the occurrence of musculoskeletal disorders (MSD) in different body parts of artisans engaged in crafted footwear manufacturing activity. Due to the difficult physical activities carried out by artisans, there was a possibility of evolving different kinds of MSDs.

OBJECTIVE

To evaluate the prevalence of MSD symptoms in various body regions of crafted footwear manufacturing artisans. This work further aims to assess different working postures.

METHODS

The existing working environment and the occurrences of MSD indications of 105 artisans of Kolhapuri crafted footwear manufacturing were evaluated in this study. The data collection was done through an interview and using Nordic musculoskeletal questionnaire. The work uses the Rapid Upper Limb Assessment (RULA) method for posture analysis. Multiple regression investigation was used to evaluate different risk factors linked with MSDs symptoms.

RESULTS

It has been cleared that there are high occurrences of MSD pain between crafted footwear manufacturing artisans. The most frequently affected body areas were low back, neck, hips/thighs/buttocks, shoulder, elbows, hand and wrist, knees and upper back. The final RULA grand total of 6.1 specifies that artisans' posture needs to be change.

CONCLUSION

The artisans who were associated with the manufacturing of Kolhapuri footwear had a high prevalence of musculoskeletal symptoms. Analysis of data suggests that the necessity of operational implementation program for handcrafted footwear manufacturing artisans.