During the period in which RULA underwent validation tests it was used in both industrial and office settings by ergonomists from the Institute for Occupational Ergonomics and by physiotherapists who attended introductory courses in ergonomics. Specific operations .where RULA was reported as a useful assessment tool 9 include a variety of hand and machine packing operations, VDU-based tasks, garment-making operations, supermarket checkout operations, microscopy tasks and operations in the car manufacturing industry.