Knowledge acquisition for the development of an upper‐body work‐related musculoskeletal disorders analysis tool

ERGO_X is a fuzzy expert system that supports workstation ergonomic analysis and provides advice on corrective measures aimed at improving the overall quality of the ergonomic design. ERGO_X was designed in a modular way to make further developments easier and to allow the selection of different ergonomic analysis contexts. The modularity feature mainly is a result of the knowledge base modular structure. Each module was built as a multilevel tree fuzzy relation. This relation reflects the interaction between attributes that are used to evaluate the level of severity of the relevant risk factors that are present at the analyzed workstation. The aim of this study is to address some aspects related to the knowledge acquisition process involved in the development of the ERGO_X knowledge base. In this regard, the author refers to her knowledge engineering activities in the development of a work-related musculoskeletal disorder module. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Hum Factors Man 17: 149–162, 2007.