Category: Public Ergonomics Seminar
Date: 22nd-23rd October 2019
Venue: UPM Serdang, Selangor

As an annual event, Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Malaysia organized National Human Factors and Ergonomics Seminar on 22-23 October 2019 which took place at Auditorium Rashdan Baba, Universiti Putra Malaysa with the theme “Ergonomics Beyond Efficiency”.

There were 10 speakers in total which from Malaysia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia and Thailand. Dr. Ng Yee Guan, the President of HFEM did the opening speech and share with the crowd the direction of HFEM in Malaysia.

The seminar was continued with the presentation by the Past President of HFEM, Prof. Dr. Shamsul Bahri Md Tamrin with the titled Ergonomics Assessment: The Current Methodology, Future Competency as Assessor and International Certification. He explained in detail the direction of ergonomics competency in Malaysia and compare with the Ergonomics competency in the neighboring countries. He also mentioned that Department of Occupational Safety and Health moving towards Ergonomics as a OSH competency in Malaysia and there will be Industrial Code of Practices on Ergonomics in the near future.

Mr Fauzi Yahaya, Senior Director in Mimos Berhad, also past president of HFEM took the stage with presentation titled “Ergonomics in the 4 IR Era”. He shared the role of ergonomics in IR 4.0 and how the shift is happening in technologies in the 4th IR era which is related with ergonomics. It seems that MNC is having a rapid IR 4.0 technological implementation whereas SMEs adoption is still way behind. He concluded his session with a message of regardless of the advancement in technologies, human factors including attitude and conscience plays a critical role towards betterment of well beings.

The seminar then continued with Assoc. Prof. Dr. Wattana Jalayondeja from Mahidol University which discuss about the break reminder for the office workers. His team’s contribution was in the development of software for reminding office workers to frequently took break and perform exercise to battle the prolong sitting which is currently know as one of major problem in organization.

Topic on fatigue management was presented by Assoc. Prof. Dr Yassierli from our neighboring country, Indonesia. His highlight was, his journey from year 1995 until now in the field of fatigue management and how it has progressed to fatigue indicators, fatigue intervention, mental fatigue and now focus on daily fit to work from the aspect of physical and mental. At the end, he put forward the current challenges in fatigue management which need to be addressed as listed below:

• How to monitor fatigue at work
• How to develop an effective fit-for-duty assessment tool
• How to increase fit-for-duty & awareness at work

Then, the last 2 sessions were delivered by Malaysian government and agency official which were Ir. Haji Omar Mat Piah, Director General, DOSH and Dr. Edrin Nazri Abdul Rasib, SOCSO. Director General of DOSH shared the role of DOSH in ergonomics implementation and also further confirmed that ICOP on Ergonomics will be implemented in 2 years’ time and as for the regulation of Ergonomics will take more time since it involved parliament’s approval.

Dr. Edrin gave the last speech for the first day about the compensation claims on Musculoskeletal Disorders in Malaysia.

In the second day, the speakers line up were Prof. Dr. Debkumar Chakrabarti (India), Assoc. Prof. Dr. Lilis Surienty (USM, Malaysia), Prof. Dr Ravindra Goonetilleke (Hong Kong), Ir. Mohd Hafzi Md Isa (MIROS, Malaysia) and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Stephen Poon (APUTI, Malaysia).

Prof. Dr. Debkumar highlighted the importance of simple ergonomics design to ease daily life and also the PhD program in Ergonomics in India. Assoc. Prof. Dr. Lilis Surienty shared her experiences in conducting research in shiftwork and the dilemmas in shiftwork implementation in Malaysia. She called for more research addressing shiftwork issues in Malaysia.

Prof. Dr Ravindra Goonetilleke made a remarkable note and challenges the current research in Ergonomics which still discussing the limitation of human and musculoskeletal disorders which has been discussed since 1760 by Bernardino Ramazzini. He pointed out that the Ergonomics direction should be increasing the performance and focus on the developing the strength, capabilities and capacities.

Ir. Mohd Hafzi Md Isa presented how human factors and influenced driving safety. The speaker for the seminar was Dr. Stephen Poon who gave his insight about user experience design and the IR 4.0.

Overall, it was a great event organized by HFEM with a lot information sharing and eye opening to the participants and kudos to all the organizing team.

T.Hari Krishnan