Recommendations
The results show that the ‘modified’ checkout was the most acceptable design in terms of physical load, productivity and operator acceptance. However, to take account of management’s objective to improve productivity by providing more floorspace, a new checkout design that takes up less floor space would be required.
Recommendations were therefore made for the design of a new shorter checkout that would incorporate the more acceptable features of the ‘modified’ check- out, The design features common to all three checkouts were also reviewed and some improvements were suggested based on previous research (Baron and Habes, 1992; Hinnen et al. 1992; Slappendel, 1992), anthropometry (Grandjean, 1988) and the specific task demands. The proposed checkout design is shown in Figure 4.