image: A team from the US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory won the 2007 Ergo Cup. DOE JGI's "Shake 'N Plate" instrument took the prize for the "team-driven workplace solutions" category at the 10th annual Applied Ergonomics Conference. view more
Credit: © 2007 The Regents of the University of California
WALNUT CREEK, CA—Emerging from a record field of 28 finalists representing many major multinational companies, a team of scientists and engineers from the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) won the 2007 Ergo Cup. DOE JGI's "Shake 'N Plate" instrument took the prize for the "team-driven workplace solutions" category at the 10th Annual Applied Ergonomics Conference March 12-15 in Dallas, Texas. The internationally recognized Ergo Cup, presented by the Institute of Industrial Engineers, provides opportunities for institutions to highlight successful ergonomic innovations.
"Ergo injuries are preventable," said Steve Chu, LBNL Director who serves as lead University of California National Laboratory Director providing oversight for DOE JGI. "Most injuries are due to incorrect habits in daily activities or not paying attention to the warning signs your body is sending. Ergo injuries do not suddenly occur. There are almost always precursors. So I am particularly encouraged by the vigilant efforts on the part of DOE JGI to have recognized the trends and sought to proactively address them."
"Ergonomics is a serious concern at the DOE JGI Production Genomics Facility," said Eddy Rubin, DOE JGI Director. "DOE JGI has worked hard over the past several years to raise awareness about these issues and in response has designed and instituted many improvements in our high-throughput DNA sequencing process to alleviate activities that may put our production-line staff at risk."
The winning innovation, "Shake 'N Plate," is a simple device designed to alleviate upper body fatigue associated with bacterial culture plating. Operators were manually processing stacks of 22 cm x 22 cm gel-filled plates weighing up to 7 lbs. The hand grasp forces and total weight during long processing times made this an unpleasant and fatiguing task. The "Shake 'N Plate" is a lightweight sheet metal platform mounted on a ball joint similar to a camera tripod. In fact, one of the operators used the camera tripod idea as her original design suggestion to the DOE JGI Instrumentation Group. The design was quickly fabricated in the LBNL shops and put into production use. The device removes almost all of the weight from the operator's arms and actually improves the process throughput.
The "Shake 'N Plate" upstaged such big names in the competition as Boeing, GE, Harley Davidson, and Toyota, to take home the prize.
Ergonomics is the science devoted to the design of equipment and practices optimized to reduce musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) in the workplace. According to the U.S. Department of Labor Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA), every year, work-related MSDs account for one-third of all occupational injuries and illnesses reported by employers to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). OSHA estimates that the annual cost of workers' compensation for MSDs exceeds $50 billion. MSDs can cause permanent disability, preventing workers from returning to their jobs and rendering painful even the most routine tasks of daily life.
"We are first and foremost concerned with the health and safety of our employees, which was the original motivation for the formation of the DOE JGI Ergonomics Working Group," said Susan Lucas, head of the DOE JGI Sequencing Department. "Since mounting this campaign, we have experienced a steady decrease in OSHA-recordable ergonomic injuries while bottom-line productivity and morale have risen."
"Our science is absolutely dependent on maintaining a safe work environment," said Rubin. "To ensure our success, we need to continue to raise awareness about safe practices and innovate to ensure that all of our activities do not place workers at risk. Ultimately, we need to see that ergonomics and safety become part of our institute's DNA."
The winning team of DOE JGI and LBNL Engineering Division staff comprised Christine Naca, Martin Pollard, Diane Bauer, Catherine Adam, Simon Roberts, Karl Petermann, Charlie Reiter, Ira Janowitz, Karli Ikeda, Miranda Harmon-Smith, Sanna Anwar and Damon Tighe.
For more information on the Applied Ergonomics Conference and the Ergo Cup competition see: http://www.appliedergo.org/conference/ErgoCup.htm.
The DOE Joint Genome Institute, supported by the DOE Office of Science, unites the expertise of five national laboratories, Lawrence Berkeley, Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, and Pacific Northwest, along with the Stanford Human Genome Center to advance genomics in support of the DOE mission related to clean energy generation and environmental characterization and clean-up. DOE JGI's Walnut Creek, Calif. Production Genomics Facility provides integrated high-throughput sequencing and computational analysis that enable systems-based scientific approaches to these challenges. Additional information about DOE JGI can be found at: http://www.jgi.doe.gov/