Anthropometry of civilian Singaporean

Abstract

Singapore is a small country located in the South East Asia region and is a key manufacturing player in the world. As such, this result in more companies building production plants in Singapore, however the anthropometric data used for designing workspace are data from other regions in the world. With an established fact that workspace designs that are not suitable for the population of interest can bring about occupational hazard and reduce productivity. Therefore there is a pressing need for Singapore to establish its own anthropometric data so as to design a safe and effective ergonomic workspace design. There are a total of 50 males and 50 females with age ranging from 16 – 61 years randomly selected to participate in this study. However the distribution of races in the study was controlled to reflect the race distribution of Singapore. A total of 17 body dimensions that are essential to workspace design in the production plant were chosen and recorded for this study. Comparison is done between anthropometric data collected from this study and to that of the Norway and Thailand. There were significant differences found in stature height, body weight, and other body dimensions that illustrate the need to use appropriate anthropometric data when it comes to designing workspace so as to achieve a safe and ergonomic workplace.