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The Manufacturing Sector Workshop was held at the NORA Symposium on April 20, 2006. A discussion was held surrounding the occupational safety and health issues that were of most interest to the attendees. Approximately 35 persons were in attendance.
Starting with a list of manufacturing research issues assembled from previous Town Hall Meetings and NORA web site submissions, the group further refined and developed a final list of issues. Table 1 provides the final list with an annotation of the new issues proposed by the attendees.
All attendees were then given ten votes that they could cast in a multi-voting process. Votes could be cast in any way the attendees wished, with as many votes cast on a particular item as they desired.
For the Workshop Wrap-up presentation at the NORA Symposium, vote tallies for several closely related issues were combined. In the first case, “economics of injuries/return on investment” and “business case for health and safety,” the two combined issues were both highly ranked, well within the top ten. While combining them did move them to the top of the list, it also made room for another issue to be included on the list. In the second case, “MSD/ergonomics” and “ergonomic models,” combining the two issues did not change the ranking of the issues; it merely increased the vote tally. The reason for combining these two issues was to show that the issue was a broader topic than initially laid out in the list. Several other research issues are also could also be combined, but for Workshop Wrap-up presentation, were not due to their limited individual vote tallies. Several issues had tied vote counts.
The top eleven research issues (eleven are included since four were tied for the final three positions) are given in Table 2.
Table 1. Manufacturing Sector issues discussed in the NORA Symposium Manufacturing Workshop. Most issues were identified at previous NORA Town Hall meetings of from the NORA web site Items identified by “**” were proposed by attendees of the workshop.
| Manufacturing Research Issue | Multi-Vote Count |
MSD/ergonomics |
16 |
Economics of injuries, return on investment |
12 |
Surveillance/incident investigation |
12 |
Aging workforce |
12 |
Business case for health and safety |
11 |
**Leading (predictive) metrics of injury and illness |
11 |
Occupational asthma |
10 |
**RF/EMF |
10 |
Small business issues |
9 |
**Safety management systems |
9 |
**Biological (genetic) and environmental interactions |
9 |
**Prevention by design |
9 |
Noise – hearing protection, exposure criteria, control |
8 |
Work stress |
8 |
Nanotechnology |
7 |
Migrant/immigrant laborer issues |
7 |
Obesity |
7 |
**Presenteeism |
7 |
Beryllium exposure |
6 |
Fitness/wellness programs |
6 |
**R2P models |
6 |
Culture of safety |
5 |
**Vibration (hand) |
5 |
**Best training methods for involving workers in health and safety programs |
5 |
Worker training |
4 |
**Personal protective equipment |
4 |
Engineering controls |
3 |
Ergonomic models (computational) |
3 |
Alternative work schedules |
3 |
Predisposed workers |
3 |
Global OSH |
2 |
Indoor air quality |
2 |
Silica |
2 |
Wireless technology |
1 |
Control banding |
1 |
Health effect research |
1 |
Multiple chemical exposures |
1 |
Medications and injury/illness |
1 |
**Cross-cutting medical exposures |
1 |
“Contracting out” health and safety tasks |
0 |
Chemical process safety |
0 |
Chemical industry |
0 |
Chemical security |
0 |
Infrastructure protection |
0 |
Emergency response efforts |
0 |
Injury diagnosis |
0 |
Chloramine exposure in meat packing |
0 |
Brominated compounds |
0 |
Effects of cold on MSDs |
0 |
Table 2. Top Eleven Manufacturing Sector issues from the NORA Symposium Manufacturing Workshop.
Rank |
Manufacturing Research Issue |
Multi-Vote Count |
1. |
Economics of injuries, return on investment, business case for health and safety |
23 |
2. |
MSD/ergonomics and ergonomic models (computational) |
19 |
3. |
Surveillance/incident investigation |
12 |
3. |
Aging workforce |
12 |
4. |
Leading (predictive) metrics of injury and illness |
11 |
5. |
RF/EMF research |
10 |
5. |
Occupational asthma |
10 |
6. |
Small business issues |
9 |
6. |
Biological (genetic) and environmental interactions |
9 |
6. |
Prevention by design |
9 |
6. |
Safety management systems |
9 |
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