The program is designed to aid in the diagnosis, prevention, and further understanding of problems associated with exposure to high or sustained biomechanical strain in occupational situations. It is directed towards the analysis of static working situations where the load is low or moderate. Arbitrary static arm postures in the natural shoulder range may be considered as well as different external loads.

The model predicts forces in the shoulder muscles, in the shoulder joints, and in the coracohumeral ligament. It is internally consistent, structurally stable and its elements have been shown to be compatible.

The shoulder model yields predictions of internal forces, given only a set of simple data characterizing the load situation: posture, external forces, and anthropometric information.

The fully menu driven program uses graphics to display results in the form of diagrams. No special training is required to operate it. The minimum hardware configuration consists of a PC AT with a VGA compatible graphics card, at least 2 MB of RAM, and at least 2 MB of free disk space. A math coprocessor is strongly recommended. All the files necessary to install and run the SHOULDER package are placed on two 3.5", 1.44 MB diskettes.