Minimizing OHS Risks with Spherical Fuzzy Sets as a Verdict to Inventory Management: A Case Regarding Energy Companies

As one of the vital ergonomics operations, occupational health and safety (OHS) measures are important for each and every production environment. Furthermore, the severity of adverse impacts or occurrence probability of OHS risks can be much higher, especially for particular companies dealing with hazardous or dangerous materials or products. Although eminent instances exist in the OHS literature, studies linking OHS to operational supply chain management (SCM) activities and aim to embed ergonomics sentiment into decision procedures in a way that reduces OHS risks are unfortunately lacking in the literature. In this point of view, a novel approach grounding on inventory control aiming OHS risk minimization was developed, and a case study regarding a gas distribution energy company was performed as demonstration. Integrated ABC-VED matrix was developed and employed to handle the inventory management problem by emphasizing OHS risks’ influence as well as proposing cost-effective solutions, while spherical fuzzy sets (SFS) and simple additive weighting (SAW) method were used to enlighten the best SCM-related decisions in terms of ABC-VED results, to minimize the OHS risks of maintenance employees and possible adverse impacts on human health. Three different actors participated as decision makers (DMs) by the employment of SFS-SAW group decision making approach, where computed categories and delineated research outcomes were scrutinized in details by benchmarking of the results in terms of varying DM assessments and supplier company driven inventoried item groups, where sensitivity analysis on overall results were also performed. 103 out of 270 items of a protoset were analyzed, a subset of 51 items listed in Category I was determined to be used in further analysis. Illustrative explanations of diversification of criteria weighting scores regarding different parties in the decision making process were also presented with several schematic representations of research outcomes in the light of multidimensional benchmarking debates.