Specific recommendations
The conveyor, and the centre of the vertical scanner should be retained at their existing heights, ie 965 mm and 1065 mm respectively. These heights are recom- mended by Grandjean (1988) for female workers performing light manipulative tasks: that is, 50-100 mm below 50th percentile shod female elbow height. The vast majority of checkout operators in Australia are female.
Vertical scanning is maintained. In addition to the claimed productivity advantages (i.e. less cleaning required, better barcode reading function), vertical canners presenting a horizontal beam toward the cashier minimize the handling of items, because most barcodes are located on the vertical surface of a container or box (Baron and Habes, 1992). Also, as the majority of operators working at horizontal scanners lift all items during handling (Hinnen et al, 1992; Slappendel, 1992), it is unlikely that significantly more lifting is required when presenting items to a vertical scanner.