Abstract Job rotation is an organisational strategy that can be used, in part, to reduce occupational exposure to physical risk factors associated with work-related musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs). Recent studies, however, suggest that job rotation schedules may increase the overall risk of injury to workers included in the rotation scheme. We describe a novel optimisation framework evaluating the effectiveness of a job rotation scheme using the fatigue failure model of MSD development and a case study with real injury data. Results suggest that the effect of job rotation is highly-dependent on the composition of the job pool, and inclusion of jobs with higher risk results in a drastic decrease in the effectiveness of rotation for reducing overall worker risk. The study highlights that in cases when high-risk jobs are present, job redesign of those high risk tasks should be the primary focus of intervention efforts rather than job rotation. Practitioner summary: Job rotation is often used in industry as a method to ‘balance’ physical demands experienced by workers to reduce musculoskeletal disorder (MSD) risk. This article examines the efficacy of reducing MSDs through job rotation using numerical simulation of job rotation strategies and utilising the fatigue failure model of MSD development.

中文翻译：

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工作轮换和与工作相关的肌肉骨骼疾病：疲劳失败的观点

摘要 工作轮换是一种组织策略，可部分用于减少职业暴露于与工作相关的肌肉骨骼疾病 (MSD) 相关的身体风险因素。然而，最近的研究表明，工作轮换计划可能会增加轮换计划中工人受伤的总体风险。我们描述了一种新颖的优化框架，该框架使用 MSD 开发的疲劳失效模型和具有真实伤害数据的案例研究来评估工作轮换计划的有效性。结果表明，工作轮换的影响高度依赖于工作池的组成，包括风险较高的工作会导致轮换对降低整体工人风险的有效性急剧下降。该研究强调，在存在高风险工作的情况下，这些高风险任务的工作重新设计应该是干预工作的主要重点，而不是工作轮换。从业者总结：工作轮换经常在工业中用作“平衡”工人身体需求的一种方法，以减少肌肉骨骼疾病 (MSD) 的风险。本文使用工作轮换策略的数值模拟并利用 MSD 开发的疲劳失效模型，研究了通过工作轮换减少 MSD 的功效。