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The COVID-19 pandemic has heavily affected all industries in all over the World. Although some factories stopped their production activities due to the precautions, the most of privately owned Turkish carpet manufacturers have continued their production continuously. We have arranged several meetings with two credible carpet manufactures to ask for absenteeism rates of blue-collar workers. We have collected the data and analyzed it by comparing prepandemic conditions. We have seen that absenteeism rates have significantly changed. In addition, we surveyed 1258 employees from 2 carpet manufacturer and found that %81.31 of them have at least 1-day sick absence during the pandemic due to a real Covid 19 or being a suspect of being Covid19 (has a contact with a Covid 19 positive person). It can be stated that at least for these two carpet manufacturers, absenteeism rates were relatively higher when compared to condition before pandemic. We have already seen some of the effects of absenteeism on the production quantities and some other effects are expected to be realized soon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of stressors is recognized as critical for human resource development and management issues where it can have an impact on occupational stress and performance blue-collar employees in the pharma manufacturer division. The employees themselves developing various kinds of stress factors that may interfere with the implementation of the work. According to these conditions, the role of an organizational change related to work pattern hours, shift handover and workdays is an unavoidable policy of management change. This study was conducted to determine the effect of several stress factors, especially for the policy of management change on occupational stress and performance blue-collar employees in the production division. The outcomes of Smart PLS 3.2.9 path model revealed findings for blue-collar employees (360 respondents) role in the organization significantly correlated with employee's stress (T = 3.305; p-value = 0.001) and also significantly correlated with performance (T = 3.268; p-value = 0.001). The indicator that has the highest factor loading value of the role of the organization is the work pattern hours. A negative relationship was established between stress to performance of blue-collar employees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital Human Modeling (DHM), the process of CAD representation of human body form, is an emerging tool used to simulate workplaces in order to provide solutions for ergonomics related problems. Digital humans/manikins are being incorporated in the software, can be manipulated easily and assessed for work related discomfort, injuries and workplace design. Manual workers in small scale industries are often exposed to work related discomfort and pain while performing work. These exposures may lead to development of work related musculoskeletal disorders (WRMSDs) and low back pain (LBP), affecting the efficiency of workers and productivity of the industry. The main objective of current study is to analyze the working postures of manual workers in small scale industries by using Rapid Upper Limb Assessment (RULA) assessment in CATIA V5R20 software. The workers in stone cutting and polishing industry were selected, and found to be working in awkward postures involving heavy manual lifting, bending, twisting and turning of the trunk. Most of the postures indicated a high risk score of 7, indicating changes in the posture to be done immediately. Ergonomic interventions were suggested and the improved posture was evaluated using RULA and the posture indicated a score of 3, indicating low risk. The manual lifting task was also assessed using NIOSH lifting equation at the origin and destination of lift, using CATIA V5R20. The ergonomic interventions reduced the value of lifting index from 1.79 to 0.98, indicating safe limit. The results indicate that awkward working posture risks can be minimized by effectively using ergonomic interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]