A Decision-Making Framework for Total Ergonomic Risk Score Computation in Companies

To ensure a safe production environment for blue-collar employees, physical ergonomic risk factors (PERFs) such as noise, the vibration must be considered in every workplace. However, PERFs require both theoretical and practical information to figure out their characteristics and negative health effects on employees. This paper proposes an easy-to-follow sustainable ergonomic guide that includes the theoretical and practical information about the calculation details of PERFs, a decision-making (DM) tool to evaluate ergonomic risk factors, and a formula to calculate the total ergonomic risk score of a company. In the DM process, the Pythagorean fuzzy extensions of the Analytical Hierarchy Process were utilized to evaluate PERFs with respect to the social, technical, environmental, and economic criteria. To show the applicability of this guide, a real-world application was conducted in a company located in Ankara. According to the results, technical criteria were determined as the most critical (w=0.459), followed by the social, i.e., health-related factor (w=0.320). The total risk score of the company was calculated using the measurement of the PERFs and the coefficients obtained from the DM process. A comprehensive sensitivity analysis was conducted to validate the robustness of the guide. The main contribution of this paper is that a formula that can be utilized to calculate the total ergonomic risk score of any type of company was developed, based on the fuzzy DM technique and Threshold Limit Values of risk parameters.