Innovative Hand-Tool Design for Cleaning of Slippery Floor and Broken Glass Pieces in Shopfloor of FMCG Sector

The effective housekeeping and management of the slippery wet floor is a tedious and challenging task generally witnessed in the Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) manufacturing units engaged in manufacturing personal care products, viz., detergents, shampoo, oil, etc. The context-specific particulates like broken pieces of glass resulting from bottles falling from conveyor belts add to the housekeeping staff's miseries. In the wake of inadequate tools for such tasks, housekeeping workers resort to collecting oil-drenched glass pieces with traditional trash lifting tools, which are not efficient for handling such mixed trash. The broken glass pieces tend to hurt the housekeeping personnel by injuring their hand and forearms with sharp cuts and injuries. As such, there lies a dire need to devise innovative tools for this context-specific housekeeping activity of prime concern on the FMCG shopfloor. In the current research, by deploying a proactive participatory design process for context-specific product design and development, the researchers have come up with an innovative hand tool that can provide feature-rich help and aid, particularly in the effective management of wet slippery floors engaging broken glass pieces. It can act as a mitigating solution to the existing safety concerns and promote safety thereof in specific FMCG work activities/tasks. This paper thus can act as a ready reckoner for industrial designers/engineers to devise other such innovative tools and apparatus for catering to the need for specific work activities related to the FMCG shopfloor.