Introduction

      Hyper Panda company owns the largest retail chain in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
and the Arab Republic of Egypt, and millions of customers visit it every year. [1] Panda
was established in 1978 and quickly established itself as one of the leading
organizations in the retail sector in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It is a leading food
retailer with broad activity and strong business presence. The headquarters of Panda
Retail Company is located in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which is one of the major
retail chains in the Middle East and the largest retail chain in the Kingdom with around
200 stores in 44 cities. Its clause operates two types of stores; Hyper Panda
(supermarket) and Panda supermarket. With more than 120 million customers visiting
the store every year, it operates 4 major distribution centers in the Kingdom with a fleet
of more than 650 trucks to deliver 70,000 items of food and non-food products to its
stores. The vision of Hyper Panda is to achieve sustainable leadership in the retail
market, so that creativity is its approach to winning the trust and love of customers. [2]
To achieve sustainability, the team will identify and find work environment risks based
on the information and methods we used in the human resource course. In addition, we
will present our side and recommendations as part of this project. Also, this project is
not only about the worker, but also about the risk of injuries that the customer may be
exposed to.

This project will include: methodology, human factor hazards for the worker and
the customer, RULA method, Borg Scales, NASA-TLX, RWL

Problem Statement
HyperPanda is one of the biggest Supermarkets in Saudi Arabia that deals with
food, electronics and equipment industries. In these times HyperPanda gets a lot of
customers so that causes a high amount of work for the employees. The increase of the
amount of work gives a high percentage of the ergonomic hazard’s occurrence. By
reducing the ergonomics hazard, it will improve productivity and efficiency and reduce
the costs associated with insurance.  A high-risk injury such as low back injury
sometimes needs a surgery that costs around $1600 per one employee which happens
a lot in this field and it will affect the company if that happens continuously. The
proposed solution is by applying safety methods which are RULA, Borg scale, NASA
Task load index and Recommended weight limit, which help to propose a solution for
the ergonomic hazards. 

Literature Review

          A literature review is a selective overview of existing research relevant to the issue
that illustrates and justifies how the investigation might help address some of the
concerns or gaps in this field of study. Hyper Panda is the largest retail chain in the
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Where there are a lot of workers and customers, which may
lead to an increase in the percentage of work and many risks may occur during that
time. So, we will review many examples similar to our project, in order to help us reduce
risks to workers and customers and make the environment safer and more convenient.
Wal-Mart is one of the biggest supermarkets in the United States and this
supermarket faced a similar problem as Hyper Panda that caused harm to the workers,
but their hazard was different. So, Wal-Mart did a corporate wide settlement agreement
with the United State Department of Labor to improve their safety and health in their
stores which was 2857 stores. The settlement was in two cases and it began in 2011.
OSHA quoted total of 24 serious violations of workplace safety and health standards for
Wal-Mart and that was In February 2012, OSHA cited the violation after an inspections
in 2011 that identified fall hazards, obstructed exit routes, absence of the lockout
procedures in the workplace after the employees performs the maintenance on the
compactor, the grinder was unguarded, there was no training to use the Personal
Protective Equipment (PPE) for the employees and no training of facing chemical
hazards. So under the settlement it says that Wal-Mart should lock the compactors
when it is not in use and it is operated under the trained manager supervision. Wal-Mart
should also improve the hazard communications training for cleaning chemicals, so the
procedures ensure that there is no handling of undiluted chemicals to all employees.
Also, employees must use the personal protective equipment while cleaning.[3] All of
that happened to ensure the health of the worker while working in the workplace as will
be discussed in this project but for Hyper Panda’s issues.

            Despite the differences in industry, some jobs may be identical to those

performed elsewhere. Lifting and material handling are frequent duties in numerous
sectors, such as vehicle manufacture and bridge construction. In an industrial
environment, the jobs usually require employees to lift, push, pull and carry big goods.
Additionally, some occupations are regular and demand the worker to stand or sit for
extended periods of time. Musculoskeletal problems caused by industrial employment
are a leading cause of lack of workdays, performance, and money. As for the workers
and freight, stock and equipment movers were one of the industries with the highest risk
of accidents occuring in days absent from work in 2015, according to the Bureau of
Labor Statistics (US Department of Labor). 
There are also some extra data for 2015, such as: 
 Musculoskeletal problems, such as those caused by lifting too much weight,
accounted for 31% (356,910 cases) of all cases for all workers.
 sprains, strains, and tears were the most common kind of injury or illness for all
owners in 2015, accounting for 421,610 days away from work, or 37% of all
instances.
The majority of back, spine, and spinal cord problems were encountered by operators,
fabricators, and laborers (41 percent) and service employees, according to a research
published in 2000 by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
for the year 1997. The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
published guidelines to teach workers how to do these jobs safely and effectively using
ergonomic concepts. The recommendations from the National Institute of Occupational
Safety and Health were: 
Manually lifting, carrying, or lowering materials is reduced or eliminated. Some products
can be palletized and moved mechanically in large bins or containers for bulk handling.
Reduce the container's capacity or load to reduce the object's weight. Instead of lifting,
carrying and lowering objects, convert the job to a push or pull movement.[4]

Methodology
  As previously stated, this project is focused on the worker and the possibility of
injury to the customer. The value of ergonomics and how it affects organizational
design, which in turn affects the worker, was taught in the human factor course. As a
result, we will concentrate on providing assistance to the worker and ensuring that he or
she is working in a healthy atmosphere. The following strategies and monitoring
mechanisms will be used:

1.    RULA method: an ergonomic evaluation tool that takes into account the
biomechanical and postural demands of job tasks/demands on the body, trunk,
and upper extremities. The Rapid Upper Limb Assessment tool employs a
methodical approach to determining the appropriate body posture, force, and
repetition for the job task at hand.
 
2.    Borg-RPE: The Borg Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE) scale will assist you
in determining how hard you're working. The amount of effort you believe your
body is exerting is known as perceived exertion. This scale's ratings are based
on heart rate HR (the amount of effort your heart is exerting to circulate blood
around your body).

3.    The NASA Task Load Index (NASA-TLX): is a commonly used, subjective,
multidimensional evaluation method that rates perceived workload in order to
evaluate the effectiveness or other aspects of success of a task, device, or team.
4.   Recommended weight limit (RWL): The maximum acceptable weight (load)
that nearly all healthy employees could lift over the course of an 8-hour shift
without increasing the risk of musculoskeletal disorders (MSD) to the lower back.

Data Collection Analysis

In the data collection we used two techniques such as survey and observation. In the
workers part we didn’t have any people that we know to send out online survey to the worker
to answer so, we went to HyperPanda and started to observe different tasks that the worker
does usually such as lifting boxes and we took notes about their postures. On the other hand
for customer part we did both observing and online survey, in the online survey we noticed that
more than the half faced injuries on their low back due to awkward postures, and about the
half who faced some injuries in their upper body due to lifting heavy objects, also we asked the
people about their satisfaction of the arrangement of the product and the majority were ok
with it, but there were some dissatisfactions about the arrangement.

Results and Discussion

RULA Method for worker
In this step we are going to gather the data from the worker by observing
their work and also by asking some of the workers about their job. There are
REBA score that we are going to calculate according to the RULA sheet for wrist
Posture and Neck, Trunk and leg score which tells us if the task is acceptable or
should implement changes.
1- Pulling and lifting the items from the storage to the shelves:
Neck score Trunk score Leg score
3 5 2

8 + 2 = 10

Upper arm Lower arm Wrist position

4 2 3

7+2=9
From table C the REBA score = 12+1 =13 which is greater than 11, so that means
that the worker at very high risk, the change must be implemented.

2- Label the barcode for the product:

Neck score Trunk score Leg score
2 2 1

3+0=3

Upper arm Lower arm Wrist position

4 1 2
 5+1=6
From table C the REBA score = 5+1 = 6 which is between 4 and 7, so that means
that the worker at medium risk, further investigate change soon.

NASA (TLX) for worker

This step will be about the NASA Task Load Index which contains the
mental demand, physical demand, temporal demand, effort, performance
and frustration scales from low to high or good to poor. This will help to
calculate the adjusted rate for better understanding of the high and low load
of the work for the workers.   
NASA (TLX) for Worker 1’s Task:

Rate (Ri) Adjusted

O Frequency Weight (Wi =
M P T E F rating (ARi =
P (fi) fi/15)
L L L F L Ri × Wi)
ML T O E M 3 3/15 70 14
M L P F L
L
PL P O E 2 2/15 25 3.3
L P F F
L
TL F F M 1 1/15 70 4.6
L L L
OP E 2 2/15 20 2.7
F F
L
EF 3 3/15 50 10
P
L
FL 3 3/15 100 20

Total = ΣARi 54.6

NASA (TLX) for Worker 2’s Task:
 Rate (Ri) Adjusted
O Frequency Weight (Wi =
M P T E F rating (ARi =
P (fi) fi/15)
L L L F L Ri × Wi)
ML M O E M 3 3/15 100 20
M L P F L
L
PL P F E 2 2/15 50 6.67
L L F F
L
TL F F T 1 1/15 75 5
L L L
OP E O 2 2/15 20 2.7
F P
EF 3 3/15 85 17
P
 L
FL 3 3/15 0 0

Total = ΣARi 51.37

Borg Scale for worker

Borg scale has two type to assess physical workload of a task. The first one is
Borg-RPE scale which scale from 6 ‘No exertion at all’ to 20 ‘Maximum exertion’ and
the other type is Borg-CR10 and ranges from 0 ‘Nothing at all’ to ‘Absolute
maximum’. First method used was the Borg-RPE then later Borg-CR10 came which
used the best in specific area of the body. [3]
Borg-RPE:
Number rating Verbal rating Activity
6 No exertion at all --
7 Extremely light --
8 Label the barcode
9 Very light --
10 --
11 Light --
12 --
13 Somewhat hard Overhead reach
14 Force
15 Hard --
16 --
17 Very hard --
18 Posture
19 Extremely hard --
20 Maximum exertion --
Borg-CR10:
Number rating Verbal rating Activity
0 Nothing at all --
0,3 --
0,5 Extremely weak Label the barcode
1 Very weak --
1,5 Overhead reach
2 Weak light --
2,5 --
3 Moderate --
4 Force
 5 Strong heavy --
6 --
7 Very strong --
8 Posture
9 --
10 Extremely strong --
11 --
Absolute maximum --
Recommended weight limit (RWL) for worker:
For this technique, we are going to identify seven variables to calculate the RWL then
we are going to calculate Lifting index (LI). The seven variables are:

 LC, Constant level = 23Kg

 HM, the Horizontal Multiplier factor = 25/H
 VM, the Vertical Multiplier factor = (1-0.003 |V-75|)
 DM, the Distance Multiplier factor = (0.82+4.5/D)
 FM, the Frequency Multiplier factor = From table
 AM, the Asymmetric Multiplier factor = (1-0.0032A)
 CM, the Coupling Multiplier factor = From table
Recommended weight limit equation  RWL=HM∗VM∗DM∗FM ∗AM∗CM
Lifting index equationLI =Weight of theobject /RWL
Hence: If LI<1, no risks for low back, if LI>1, risks for low back will occur for some workers, if
LI>3, high risks for most of workers.
Example 1:
A worker was assigned to
arrange the boxes with
weights 7Kg in the shelves
as can be seen from the
figure below the
worker was injured from
the low back because
of the lifting task, so
we are going to
calculate the RWL and LI
to see the risk level for
the worker.
 Figure 5: Lifting task for the worker.

- LC= 23Kg
- HM = 25/H, Where H is the distance between hands lifting and midpoint between
ankles 25/40 = 0.625 cm
- VM = (1-0.003|V-75|), where V is the vertical distance of the load from the floor  1-
0.003|185-75|= 0.67 cm
- DM = (0.82+4.5/D), where D is the vertical travel between origin and destination
0.82+4.5/50 = 0.91 cm
- AM = (1-0.0032A), where A is the angle of torso twisting 1-0.0032*80° = 0.744
- FM = 0.55, from FM table
- CM = 1.0, from CM table
RWL = 23 * 0.625 * 0.67 * 0.91 * 0.744 *0.55 * 1 = 3.59
LI = the weight of the object / RWL  7 / 3.59 = 1.95
From the example above some of the workers will face a risk from this task so, it must be
redesign like putting a platform under the worker or a small stair.

RULA Method for customer:

1- Lifting the items from low height shelves:
Neck score Trunk score Leg score
2 4 2
 6+0=6

Upper arm Lower arm Wrist position

2 1 2

2+2=4

From table C the REBA score = 7+1 =8 so REBA between 8-10 and it means that
the customer at high risk, so Hyperpanda should investigate and implement change.

2- Pushing poor designed shopping cart:

Neck score Trunk score Leg score
1 3 3
5+2=7

Upper arm Lower arm Wrist position

3 2 3

5+1=6
From table C the REBA score = 9+1 =10 so REBA between 8-10 and it also means
that the customer at high risk, so Hyperpanda should investigate and implement
change.

NASA (TLX) for customer

NASA (TLX) for Customer 1’s Task:
 Rate (Ri) Adjusted
O Frequency Weight (Wi =
M P T E F rating (ARi =
P (fi) fi/15)
L L L F L (Ri × Wi)
ML T O E E 3 3/15 10 2
M L P F F
L
PL P O E 1 1/15 60 4
L P F F
L
TL F T M 3 3/15 50 10
L L L
OP T 2 2/15 60 8
L F
L
EF M 3 3/15 0 0
L
FL 3 3/15 75 15

Total = ΣARi 42

NASA (TLX) for Customer 2’s Task:

 Rate (Ri) Adjusted
O Frequency Weight (Wi =
M P T E F rating (ARi =
P (fi) fi/15)
L L L F L Ri × Wi)
ML T T M 3 3/15 60 12
M L L E L
L F
PL O 1 1/15 50 3.3
P P E F
L F L
TL F M 3 3/15 40 8
L T L
L
OP 2 2/15 75 10
E F
F L
EF O 3 3/15 75 15
P
FL 3 3/15 25 5

Total = ΣARi 53.3

Borg Scale for customer
For the customer rating we will also use the Borg-RPE and Borg-CR10 as done
in the worker’s Borg scale but with different activities for the customer.

Borg-RPE:
Number rating Verbal rating Activity
6 No exertion at all --
7 Extremely light --
8 --
9 Very light --
10 --
11 Light Lifting items
12 --
13 Somewhat hard Very low reach
14 --
15 Hard Pushing the cart
16 --
17 Very hard --
18 Posture
19 Extremely hard --
20 Maximum exertion --

Borg-CR10:
Number rating Verbal rating Activity
0 Nothing at all --
0,3 --
0,5 Extremely weak --
1 Very weak --
1,5 --
2 Weak light Lifting items
2,5 --
3 Moderate Very low reach
4 --
5 Strong heavy Pushing the cart
6 --
 7 Very strong --
8 Posture
9 --
10 Extremely strong --
11 --
Absolute maximum --

Recommended weight limit for customers:

In this step we are going to do the same thing that we did in RWL for the worker but
with different task.

 LC, Constant level = 23Kg

 HM, the Horizontal Multiplier factor = 25/H
 VM, the Vertical Multiplier factor = (1-0.003 |V-75|)
 DM, the Distance Multiplier factor = (0.82+4.5/D)
 FM, the Frequency Multiplier factor = From table
 AM, the Asymmetric Multiplier factor = (1-0.0032A)
 CM, the Coupling Multiplier factor = From table
Recommended weight limit equation  RWL=HM∗VM∗DM∗FM ∗AM∗CM
Lifting index equationLI =Weight of theobject /RWL
Hence: If LI<1, no risks for low back, if LI>1, risks for low back will occur for some workers, if
LI>3, high risks for most of workers.
Example 2:
A man was lifting a box on his head range with weight 6Kg as can be seen from the
figure below, and we noticed that the heavy box was placed in wrong position.
 Figure 6: Lifting task.

- LC= 23Kg
- HM = 25/H, Where H is the distance between hands lifting and midpoint between
ankles 25/35 = 0.71cm
- VM = (1-0.003|V-75|), where V is the vertical distance of the load from the floor  1-
0.003|120-75|= 0.86 cm
- DM = (0.82+4.5/D), where D is the vertical travel between origin and destination
0.82+4.5/50 = 0.91 cm
- AM = (1-0.0032A), where A is the angle of torso twisting 1-0.0032*80° = 0.744
- FM = 0.55, from FM table
- CM = 1.0, from CM table
RWL = 23 * 0.71 * 0.86 * 0.91 * 0.744 *0.55 * 1 = 5.23
LI = the weight of the object / RWL  6 / 5.23 = 1.14
From the example above some of the customer will face a risk from this task so, it must be
redesign like rearrange the heavy object to the middle range.

Recommendations
For the sake of worker safety, employers are responsible for providing a safe and
secure working atmosphere for their workers. The amount and severity of MSDs caused
by physical overexertion, as well as their associated costs, can be greatly decreased by
enforcing ergonomic standards in the workplace.
 - Management should define basic ergonomic goals and expectations, discuss
them with staff, delegate responsibilities to delegated employees, and engage
openly with the workforce.

- Workers should be involved. Workers may recognize and communicate critical

information about hazards in the workplace.

- Additional training should be given. This ensures that employees are

knowledgeable about ergonomics and its advantages, as well as the value of
disclosing ergonomics-related workplace issues. [5]

Conclusion
To summarize all that has been mentioned previously, Panda Retail has made
efforts to create a successful company and a strong brand. It paved the way for the
formation of a positive brand perception by launching several activities that meet
customer needs. It also offers a unique retail experience for individuals and families by
providing fresh food and products at the best value. It enables its customers and our
communities to improve their quality of life by providing added value and enhancing
well-being. The project was focused on the worker and the possibility of injury to the
customer. We have used the ergonomics and concentrated on providing assistance to
the worker and ensuring that he or she is working in a healthy atmosphere. As we used
strategies and monitoring mechanisms which were RULA method, Borg Scales, NASA-
TLX and Risk Assessment form to find solution about the worker and the risk of injuries
that the customer may be exposed to.
Appendix:

Figure 1: RULA

Figure 2: Q1
Figure 3: Q2

Figure 4: Q3
References
[1] https://panda.com.sa/ar/
[2]https://www.savola.com/investments/retail-investments/savola-retail/panda-retail-
company
[3] https://www.ehstoday.com/standards/osha/article/21917421/walmart-agrees-to-improve-
workplace-safety-and-health-in-2857-stores

[4] https://www.spineuniverse.com/wellness/ergonomics/industrial-ergonomics-material-
handling-back-injury

[5] https://www.osha.gov/ergonomics