18/08/2010Integrating Ergonomic Trials into the Design Process

The Centre of Technology for Telstar's Containment equipment solutions is based in Telstar ACE, in Dewsbury (near Leeds) in the UK.

Containment involves separating production operators from the potential hazards of the material being handled, necessitating close attention at the design stage to the human aspects of the process which is to be carried out.  Central to the design process is an evaluation of process containment ergonomic issues. In one report a leading pharmaceutical company stated that almost 25% of all lost time illnesses were caused by issues related to ergonomics.

Telstar ACE places great emphasis on the need to perform ergonomic trials and recommends they be used at an early stage in projects to identify potential issues prior to designs being frozen  The trials involve construction of a full-scale model of the containment equipment.  Representatives of the user-group then configure the model as closely as possible with the required tooling and instruments and perform the process steps on a trial basis.

Such models were constructed and utilized in a recently awarded project involving a series of aseptic processing steps for the freeze-drying and final packing of a bulk sterile antibiotic.  The production line includes process equipment integrated with RABs and isolator units which assure the ISO 5 environment required.  The ergonomic trials for the project were conducted at the Telstar ACE factory in Dewsbury during which all operational and functional requirements were agreed with the client prior to detailed design stage.