Manufacturing

Amputations get the attention, but they are not what drives most of a manufacturer’s workers’ comp spend. The quieter, more expensive majority is musculoskeletal disorders: the strained backs, the inflamed shoulders, the cumulative wear of the same lift and reach thousands of times a shift. MSDs are the single largest category of workplace injury and roughly 30% of all comp cost. On a production line they are also highly preventable. Here is what drives them and how an ergonomics program cuts them.

Walk any plant floor and the injuries are strikingly similar: a strained back from a bad lift, a hand caught in a machine, a worker struck by a moving load, a slip on a slick floor. Manufacturing is a high-volume injury environment, but that repetition is the opportunity. When injuries are this predictable, they are preventable. Here are the seven that show up most often, what drives each one, and the specific controls that stop them.