Postural load
The total job. The distribution of the pooled OWAS
postures for the total checkout job is shown in Table 3.
At all the three checkouts the most typical OWAS
posture adopted was a standing posture with straight
back, and arms below shoulder level. However,
the proportion of time spent at the ‘short’ checkout
(86%) with a straight back posture was significantly less
(p < 0.001) than that spent in such postures at the
‘standard’ checkout (93.46%) and the ‘modified’
checkout (93.3%). The amount of ‘walking’ that
occurred at the three checkouts was also significantly
different. The proportion of time spent walking at the
‘short’ checkout (8.5%) was found to be significantly
less (p < 0.05) than at the other two checkouts.