The Center for Ergonomics at the University of Michigan College of Engineering has developed programs for analyzing manual materials-handling tasks. These programs are in use at over 2000 U.S. and international sites by ergonomists, engineers, loss-control specialists, physical and occupational therapists, researchers, and others who evaluate and design jobs.

What is EEPP?

The Energy Expenditure Prediction Program™ (EEPP) is a software tool to estimate energy expenditure rates for materials handling tasks to help assure worker safety and health.

EEPP is based on the assumption that a job can be divided into simple tasks (activity elements) and that the average metabolic energy rate of the job can be predicted by knowing the energy expenditure of the simple tasks and the time duration of the task. The EEPP software is a user friendly tool. It is more accurate than selecting values from a standard table and is more feasible and less costly than laboratory techniques involving measurement of oxygen consumption. It is useful in designing new jobs, comparing one job to another, and improving an existing job by identifying the particular tasks that require excess energy expenditure. The EEPP software provides an objective rate to gauge fatigue which can also be compared with NIOSH guidelines.

Why should you use EEPP?

The EEPP software -

• is easy to understand and apply to your materials handling jobs
• is non-technical in operation
• provides objective values to gauge worker safety, make comparisons, and design improvements
• is less expensive and often more feasible than laboratory techniques
• is more accurate than pulling standard energy expenditure values from published tabular data
• provides a summary value to compare with NIOSH guidelines

Center for Ergonomics, University of Michigan
1205 Beal Avenue, Ann Arbor
MI 48109-2117, USA
Phone: +1 734 763 2243, Fax: +1 734 764 3451