A note from Karil
As someone who is tall, I have spent a lot of my life at counters, desks, and workstations built for people a good deal shorter than me. You feel it in your back by the end of the day. So this one landed for me personally.
What I appreciate about Mark’s piece is the clarity. If you could make only one ergonomic change on your floor, he tells you exactly which one, and why it returns more than any other. As an operator, I always valued the person who could tell me the single lever that mattered most.
WorkWell's Onsite providers are uniquely trained to integrate ergonomics and MSK injury prevention, addressing workplace risk factors before they become injuries.
Mark A. Anderson, MA, PT, CPE, is the principal of ErgoSystems Consulting LLC in Plymouth, MN. A licensed physical therapist turned Certified Professional Ergonomist, Mark has more than 35 years of experience bridging clinical biomechanics and practical workplace design. He is a trusted partner of WorkWell and the developer of the Ergonomics On-Demand! professional training program.
If your safety team could make only one ergonomic change on your manufacturing floor, work surface height would deliver the largest return. It simultaneously affects posture, reach, force requirements, and fatigue at every workstation where it’s wrong.
And yet it remains one of the most consistently underestimated variables in production line design.
The height at which a task is performed determines the body position required to execute it. Set the work too low, and workers bend at the waist, loading the lumbar spine through every repetition of every shift. Set it too high, and they elevate their shoulders and operate at the top of their reach zone, loading the neck, upper trapezius, and rotator cuff across the full workday.
Neither configuration shows up as a single dramatic incident. Both quietly accumulate as MSK (musculoskeletal) claims over months and years.
Appropriate work height depends on what the job demands:
Lightweight precision work: Position 2 to 4 inches above elbow height, to bring the task into the visual field without shoulder elevation.
General assembly (loads under 5 lbs.): At or near elbow height, for neutral shoulder and arm alignment.
Forceful or heavy tasks (loads over 5 lbs.): 3 to 5 inches below elbow height, to allow downward force application without overloading the shoulders.
And “elbow height” itself varies significantly across any workforce. Anthropometric data shows roughly a 10-inch range between the shortest and tallest workers in a typical mixed-gender population, which is exactly why height-adjustable workbenches are the gold standard wherever workforce diversity or task variability exists.
You don’t need a specialist to spot the most obvious problems:
Worker bending at the waist to reach the task? The work surface is likely too low.
Shoulders visibly elevated, arms reaching upward? The work surface is likely too high.
Spine neutral, arms naturally at sides? That’s the target.
Resolving height problems doesn’t always require capital investment. A platform, a riser, or a basic adjustable table often solves the problem. The fix is frequently modest. The impact on injury rates, productivity, and end-of-shift fatigue is significant.