Ergonomic principles in designing for maintainability

The report presents a series of design guidelines which relate to improving the maintainability features of mining equipment. As part of an ECSC/NCB project, the Institute of Occupational Medicine identified the ergonomic design limitations associated with representative samples of roadheading machines, shearers, powered roof supports and face-end electrical equipment. Through a series of experiments and discussions with designers of mining equipment, ergonomic design guidelines have been produced which, if implemented fully, will largely avoid the many ergonomic limitations which were found not only to increase the accident potential of maintenance operators, but also to extend the times needed to maintain and repair mining machinery.Because of the nature of maintenance operations, it is likely that the guidelines given in this report will have value beyond the four types of machinery studied.