Earticle

The safety of the product becomes one of the most important elements in modern corporate management. Therefore, there are increasingly many countries that are enforcing the product liability(PL) act to ask the responsibility for the supply of the safe products. In relation to the activities of small and medium sized companies, which are playing important role in domestic industry, to effectively cope with PL in their pursuing their administrative activities, this paper is intended to find out how effectively the medium and small companies should be adapted to PL circumstances by reviewing the literatures. And it will help to seek the realistic improvement points in constrictions and operations of PL.

The world's No. 1 agricultural industry in danger (ILO, 2000) are classified as extremely hazardous occupations and industries that are vulnerable to musculoskeletal disorders. Countries already aware of these risks through the institutionalization of national and actively remove and analyze the risks, but the domestic political, institutional support is a very poor condition, farmers are lack of awareness of musculoskeletal disorders. In this study, domestic and foreign research and safety and health status, agricultural expert surveys, and 12 kinds of hazardous agricultural research through a farming operation at the risk of musculoskeletal disorders was to identify, improve work environment and improve national policy and institutional enough the need for introducing measures that were proposed. Based on these conclusions, in order to reduce musculoskeletal disorders of farmers, individual measures and preventive measures are very important. Therefore, prevention measures than other industries to establish policy, institutional measures for poor countries in agriculture professional education, promotion, aging problem solving, improvement of labor shortages, equipment supply and future-oriented systems will be reviewed.

The reason for the staggering rate of industrial accident for about 10 years can be interpreted as encountering limits which is not settled to be reduced by only policy approach and engineering approach method to safety culture. In the study, component factors, development stage, influencing factors, and others to safety culture in industry will be searched from previous studies, survey who conducted and analysis to figure out the factors of safety culture in Korean industry. The main results of the analysis were searched by personal factors such as safety attitude, value of safety, motives for safety, safety climate and safety processes. Most factors showed positive correlation among them and safety attitude, motives for safety, safety processes, and safety climate in the service field showed lower than other fields. In businesses with more than 1000 employees, it showed high safety climate and value of safety. For the influence on Korean correlation in safety culture, it showed safety processes, safety behavior, safety climate, value of safety, safety attitude, and motives for safety by this order. There was a problem to administrative or treatment matters of punishment, compensation, and distribution to motives for safety. Frankly speaking, people know about the importance of safety, but they partially do not worry or concern about safety. Therefore, The solution for the factors hindering the settlement of safety culture was searched and multi-directional effort would be necessary in order to mutually interact among total social approach, policy approach and active studies to safety culture.

This research conducted two-time questionnaire survey at the 9 construction jobsite located in Seoul, Gyeonggi-do, Chungcheong-do, Gyeongsang-do and Gangwon-do centering on 'A' construction company's construction jobsites because there are a lot of differences in the number of work process, danger factors, and job contents subsequent to the sorts of architecture , engineering works and plant construction, etc. As a result of the questionnaire survey, The number of the respondents who said "a little strenuous" and "unbearably strenuous" was surveyed to comprise below the half of the surveyed who were asked about the degree of physical burden. The respondents' physical pain were surveyed to occur at the part of the shoulders the most, and the next was the part of the lower back. As for the age distribution of the target people to be treated, the highest were the people in their forties followed by those in their fifties; as for the age distribution of the people who appealed their physical pain, the highest were the people in their forties followed by those in their thirties; the age distribution by work career, the highest were the laborers of less than 5 years followed by the people of 20~25 years and the people of over 25 years; as for those who complained of physical pain, the highest were the people working for 20~25 years followed by those working for less than 5 years. In the analysis of the people to be treated by process, the highest were the material-sticking workers followed by bricklayers; as for the worker complaining of physical pain, the highest were material-sticking workers followed by reinforcing rod workers. As for the target work for analysis of harmful factor-bearing burden job, this research selected the work which has a lot of pain appealers as a result of questionnaires, and material sticking, plastering, marble job, brick-laying, a reinforced rod work, framework job and welding job by centering on the work which causes a lot of muscular skeleton system burden based on the preceding research work result. To sum up the analysis results by work process; RULA indicated a large majority of work requires a precise investigation and immediate improvement required, REBA indicated High~Very high, and NLE indicated "Probable occurrence of back pain" Thus, most of the above-mentioned jobs were surveyed to cause a high possibility of muscular skeleton system disorders.

Musculoskeletal diseases can be caused in a complicated way due to environmental factors such as power, improper posture, repetition, pressure, static load, vibration and coldness, work condition factors such as work organization, and individual factors such as an individual’s physical conditions and diseases. In addition, ergonomic evaluation techniques are lacking of accurate evaluations as they may have differences in the applied object, characteristic and evaluation accuracy due to differences in the developed background and be applicable only to some of physical hazards (posture, heavy object, power). Accordingly, there may be different results depending on evaluation techniques although they are applied to the same work because every ergonomic evaluation technique has different characteristics. This study selected 10 representative businesses (printing business, manufacturing business for electronic parts, department store, large and general retail business, storage and warehouse business, restaurant business, cleaning business, hospital, care and welfare business for the elderly and telemarketing) with high outbreak of musculoskeletal diseases, identified the work characteristics and processes through visiting business places, and chose the representatively risky works for each type of business in reference to literature relating to musculoskeletal diseases. In addition, the most frequently used ergonomic evaluation techniques (OWAS, RULA, REBA, JSI, QEC) in our country were applied to the representatively works and the comparative analysis was carried out through regression analysis for the final scores per business type and average action level, resulting in estimates for the representative ergonomic evaluation techniques per business type. Moreover, the representative ergonomic evaluation techniques per business type could be confirmed from the preceding studies, which were studied in the past. The most suitable ergonomic evaluation technique could be suggested in priority for 10 types of business by comparing two representative evaluation techniques. In addition, the objectivity of studies in the past could be verified by suggesting the common techniques in 70% or more in the evaluation techniques predicted in the past studies and this study, and the objectivity of this study could also be verified. The outbreak of musculoskeletal diseases continue to increase despite industrialization and automation. Furthermore, the examinations on the harmful factors to musculoskeletal diseases have been carried out in accordance with the legal foundations. Accordingly, it is considered that business owners and examiners could accurately examine the risky works per business type by using ergonomic evaluation techniques in consideration of work characteristics per business type in examining harmful factors on musculoskeletal diseases through this study.