Are you sitting comfortably?

Backache is often caused by an incorrect sitting position. A set of ergonomic guidelines has been developed for a range of chairs, designed especially for industrial use. Now the seating adapts itself to the shape of the body - and not vice versa.

An eight-hour day can seem arduously long - especially when constant sitting regularly leads to backache. For people who spend their working day in offices, factories or laboratories, sitting on a plain old chair as opposed to ergonomically designed furniture will soon start to take its toll on their backs. According to the German Federal Association of Company Health Insurance Funds, around a third of lost working hours can be ascribed to muscular and skeletal complaints. Yet the appropriate seating for the workplace can reduce absenteeism and save costs.
People can go to extraordinary lengths to find a comfortable seating position at their workplace, says Dietmar Kempf of the Human Engineering Division of the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering IAO. The Institute assisted the company Interstuhl, which has been manufacturing the bimos brand of industrial seating for 40 years. Kempf and his colleagues firstly investigated the working environment in various production areas and laboratories, including the use of video analysis. What sequences of movements are typically required of production workers? What support does a laboratory assistant need from the seat when bending over a microscope? And how can we devise a common ergonomic standard to accommodate all of the physiological variants of the working population? We also asked workers about their needs and what they expected from work seating, reports Kempf. The results of these investigations were used to create human factors guidelines that Interstuhl used as the basis for developing its Sintec range. Three months ago, the new product line was awarded the Innovation Prize of Baden-Württemberg.
Conventional office chairs have little in common with the seating used in factories and laboratories, since the latter is required to be far more robust. Whereas an office chair is used for around eight hours a day, a work chair often has to endure three consecutive shifts around the clock. Moreover, it is frequently used at different workplaces and therefore needs to be adjustable in a greater variety of ways if it is to provide an optimum seating position. To make the chair easier to clean, IAO researchers came up with a simple solution: removable seat and back upholstery, which can be washed or replaced when it becomes soiled. High-quality chairs can represent a worthwhile long-term investment for employers, summarizes Hans-Dieter Kaping, sales director at bimos. When people are sitting comfortably, they are more motivated in their work.",Contact:,Dietmar Kempf,Phone: +49 7 11 / 9 70-21 09 ,Fax: +49 7 11 / 9 70-22 99,E-mail: [e-mail]
Fraunhofer-Institut fur Arbeitswirtschaft und Organisation IAO,Nobelstrasse 12 c,70569 Stuttgart, Germany,http://www.iao.fraunhofer.de/index_e.hbs
For further information:,bimos (in german),http://www.bimos.de/

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