Industrial smart shoes design decisions in Metaverse for hazardous industries through the fuzzy DIBR-SWEM methodology

As an extension of workplace wearable technologies, industrial smart shoes (ISS) have recently grasped the attention of professionals working in hazardous industries like the construction industry to ensure workplace safety, health, and productivity. However, the tasks of construction industry professionals are challenging in evaluating and selecting the best ISS to enhance construction workers' safety, due to methodological weaknesses in the current studies, the complexity of the decision-making process, the technologically complex nature of these devices, and the non-availability of real ISS in the marketplace. Considering all these gaps, this research attempts to design a new ISS by determining critical design criteria and selecting the best ISS prototype for construction workers using Metaverse technologies, which allow companies to conduct concept testing for products that cannot be safely and cost-efficiently tested in real-world settings. In this research, five main criteria and 18 sub-criteria are identified under the aspects of health, safety, technical, ergonomics, and economics. Then, five ISS alternatives are created for concept testing in the Metaverse. To do this, the research proposes a novel methodology named Defining Interrelationships Between Ranked criteria (DIBR) and Schweiyer-Sklar weighted evaluation model (SWEM) with fuzzy information, i.e., DIBR-SWEM-F. Whereas DIBR-F is employed to obtain criteria weights, SWEM-F is applied to find the final alternative ranking. The findings reveal that safety is the foremost criterion, whereas price, maintenance cost, and sending emergency SOS messages are the first top sub-criteria to be evaluated in the ISS development process. Based on the overall evaluation, the A5 prototype is selected as the best option for construction workers. To prove the methodology's robustness, a sensitivity control is conducted. This research contributes to the wearable technology literature by integrating the design of smart shoes to be used in hazardous industries with Metaverse technology for concept testing and the proposed methodology by deploying a novel fuzzy MCGDM approach. Further, by presenting essential design criteria of ISS, the results contribute to industrial designers and wearable technology companies responsible for the design and development of new ISS for the construction industry. Moreover, the results help industry professionals, such as decision-makers in the industrial buying process and construction workers, in evaluating and selecting the optimum ISS.