1,720,970 research outputs found
Multivariable Based Decision-making for the Maintenance Strategy of Process Equipment
Full text linkNowadays, several pieces of equipment are running over their expected life-time. An equipment revamping could solve the situation, but, it is often not possible for economical reasons, regulatory constraints, etc.. The aging of the equipment can also cause safety problems: between 1980 and 2006, the Health and Safety Executive estimated that around 28% of the major incidents occurred in the period, corresponding to 96 accidents, could be traced back to plant aging. These accidents costed more than 17,000,000 € (Horrocks et al., 2010). A correct maintenance of the equipment can extend the plant life, increase the plant efficiency and maintain an adequate level of safety. Plant management can choose among different maintenance strategies. The choice can be influenced by parameters as: the maintenance cost, the equipment condition before the maintenance, the lack of production cost, the safety of the operator during the maintenance and during the normal operations. In this paper, a multivariable Fuzzy approach is proposed in order to support the decision between different maintenance strategies through the analysis of their peculiarities, helping the management to weight the pros and cons of the alternatives. This approach is applied to a case study related to the maintenance of process equipment: it highlighted that the full refurbishment of a turbine blades system is a maintenance approach as valid as the current maintenance procedure, while the adoption of new technologies resulted not convenient
A multi-discipline method to assess the human performance in manufacturing industry for safety and quality optimization
No full textNowadays the majority of organizations operating in manufacturing field recognize the importance of including the Human Factor contribution in the industrial process optimization (Hong et al. 2007). Technical measures and work organization procedures have been optimized in order to reduce the defects and waste generation but the Human Performance prediction still represents for Managers a difficult task to deal with.The prediction of the human performances of all workers involved in a production system would help Managers in better allocating the human resources. In order to reach this objective, a model to quantify the human capability of managing a complex task in a working context characterized by a set of physical, organizational and cognitive factors was designed.This paper presents the preliminary results of a three years industry/academia partnership project to assess the human performance in manufacturing plant. A multi-discipline approach involving both technical and individual factors was adopted
An empirical approach to workload assessment for process optimization
Full text linkThe Human Factors contribution in the scope of the industrial process optimization presented in this case study had to deal with considerations regarding the physical and mental workload requirements of different workstations and the capabilities of the operators assigned to them. The scope was to provide the industrial management with a better way to allocate human resources to tasks having different workload requirements. This work presents an empirical model designed to quantify the impact of workload on workers with the aim of reducing operational errors and safety human errors. The effects of this workload assessment can contribute to consider necessary areas of improvement in terms of technical measures, procedure optimizations and improved work organization, to reduce defects and waste generation. The paper presents a brief description of the empirical approach used to assess the workload of complex tasks in assembly lines; furthermore, it also discusses some of the preliminary results of its application
Occupational Accidents analysis in Food and Drink industry, a contribution to Safety and Risk Management
Full text linkFood and Drink Industry (FDI) has a strong contribution to EU-28’s economy as reported by Eurostat (2014). FDI involves more than 4,25 millions of workers divided in 289000 companies with a relevant degree of diversification. Far away from the common way of thinking the FDI sector has an accident frequency comparable to those of other industrial sectors. Economic and social consequences of occupational accidents affects clearly FDI efficiency and its competitiveness. The accidents investigation is a crucial field for a safety and prevention management system because understanding how an accident occurred can help to avoid the same type of accident in the future. This paper was intended to give a contribution to Safety Management of FDI industry. A large Database of more than 6000 occupational accidents occurred in FDI Industry was analysed with an innovative coupled numerical method named SKM (S.O.M and K-Mean method) able to identify the occupational accident dynamics more critical and frequent. The information acquired by this research can help analysts to better address the measures to be adopted in a work environment, in order to prevent occupational accidents and give a concrete contribution to Risk Management
Operators’ risk awareness towards operations’ risk assessment: a field study in the motor vehicle field
Full text linkPurpose: The purpose of the research was to verify if there was an alignment between the risk assessed and the risk perceived or if some inconsistencies arise that could affect the safety of the operators. In fact, eventual inconsistencies should be analysed, interpreted and managed to maximise the information and training process, if needed. Design/methodology/approach: The adopted approach in this work relies on the collection of the perception of the operators about the level of risk in a work environment and its comparison with the level of risk assessed by the company. The collection of data was performed through a survey designed ad hoc, subministrated to all the workers in the area under study, being them involved in the production and in the maintenance. The survey’s structure and aim were described to the operator by the researchers and returned by the operators in a voluntary and anonymous way. Findings: The information collected allowed identifying a gap between the risk assessed and the risk perceived by the plant operators. For example, for the use of personal protective equipments, the data highlighted a discrepancy between the knowledge about their need and the behaviour in using them, which resulted in the revision of both communication and training processes, with the adoption of a more participatory approach. Originality/value: The originality of the work is in the data set, originally collected for this study, in the data collection form, also devised specifically for the case under study, despite it can be easily adapted for other work environment, and in the purpose itself, aimed at pushing risk assessment towards a personalised and adaptive approach
The role of basic and applied research activities for the improvement of OS&H conditions and the dissemination of the Culture of Safety
Full text linkAlthough the European panorama is experiencing a profound change in advance to the Industry 4.0, revolutionizing the world of work with technical, technological and information innovations, in Italy even today we have to deal with the "old" problem of work related injuries and fatalities. In particular, the accident indices of the last few years do not seem to differ much from those typical of the 1970s. The cultural effort matured with the enforcement of the European Directives, with the consequent passage from a rigid prescriptive approach to a flexible one based on risk analysis, is therefore not sufficient to face without “trauma” such rapid technological development accompanied by legislative, productive changes and increasingly widespread reassignment of tasks within the Companies.
In this context, the role of scientific research is essential to contribute to technological transfer and scientific knowledge by reconciling the essential aspects of Occupational Safety and Health, through a rigorous and devoted analysis of working scenarios. Furthermore, the dissemination of a Culture of Safety at all levels (Management and Staff roles) can encourage a bilateral synergy "Industry-University" from an OS&H point of view.
The present work discusses in more detail the results of the research carried out by the “young” OS&H researchers of the Polytechnic University of Turin presented on the second day of the Conference Dissemination of The Culture of Safety and Health at Work - “Eras of OS&H Development from early ’50 to industry 4.0”
Occupational accident-precursors data collection and analysis according to Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS) taxonomy
Full text linkData were collected in an automotive production plant during a campaign of observations performed by safety experts. A period of one week of observations was done during which safety experts monitored the working activity of an assembly line. All accident-precursors identified were reported in a format and immediately analysed and classified according to HFACS. Each collected element was classified in 3 categories as: unsafe acts (related to human behaviour), unsafe condition (related to the working condition and working organisation) and near miss (a situation that involved workers without physical consequence for them). Then each element was classified according to the four levels of HFACS: individual factor (violation or error), environmental factor, supervision and organisational factor. This step was supported by short interview with workers and/or supervisors involved to better identify the characterising factors of the event. This survey allowed the identification and classification of 100 accident-precursors that could be used in the company where they have been collected and, more in general, in manufacturing companies, to identify behaviours and areas of improvement for health and safety based on more recurrent factors that characterised the observed events, according to the methodology described elsewhere
Human performance in manufacturing tasks: Optimization and assessment of required workload and capabilities
Full text linkThis paper discusses some examples where human performance and or human error prediction was achieved by using a modified version of the Rasch model(1980), where the probability of a specified outcome is modelled as a logistic function of the difference between the person capacity and item difficulty. The model needs to be modified to take into account an outcome that may not be dichotomous and o take into account the interaction between two macro factors: (a) Task complexity: that summarises all factors contributing to physical and mental workload requirements for execution of a given operative task & (b) Human capability: that considered the skills, training and experience of the people facing the tasks, representing a synthesis of their physical and cognitive abilities to verify whether or not they are matching the task requirements. Task complexity can be evaluated as a mathematical construct considering the compound effects of Mental Workload Demands and Physical Workload Demands associated to an operator task. Similarly, operator capability can be estimated on the basis of the operators' set of cognitive capabilities and physical conditions. The examples chosen for the application of the model were quite different: one is a set of assembly workstation in large computer manufacturing company and the other a set of workstation in the automotive sector. This paper presents and discusses the modelling hypothesis, the interim field data collection, results and possible future direction of the studies.
Risk Awareness Versus risk Assessment in Manufacturing: a Field Study.
Full text linkRisk assessment in manufacturing work environments gives a relevant contribution to health and safety management for the operators: hazards are identified, and the associated risks are quantified in order to promote the risk mitigation and to improve the safety level for all the workers involved. In this paper the relation between the risk assessment performed by Safety managers and workers' risk awareness is investigated using as case study a manufacturing plant (heavy vehicles) in Northern Italy. Risks are assessed with a set of widely used procedures and methods that return a level of risk related to each workplace. According to the most recent Italian regulation on safety at works (D.Lgs. 81/08) each worker has to be informed and trained about all risks he would be exposed to during her/his working activity. Operators are the final stakeholders of this process that started with a risk assessment performed by experts and ended with a transmission of information involving safety, personal health and working behaviour. To compare risk assessment and risk awareness, a field study was performed with more than 50 workers surveyed on their personal awareness of level of risk associated to their working task. The comparison highlighted significant miss-matches that are here discussed. To solve this miss-match a review of safety information methods and safety training for workers was identified as countermeasure
Investigation on the impact of National regulations on the occupational safety
No full textOccupational accidents still represent for EU area an heavy challenge to deal with, despite in 1989 the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (article 153) stated that ‘[...] the Union shall support and complement the activities of the Member States in the following fields: (a) improvement in particular of the working environment to protect workers’ health and safety; [...]’ After more than 20 years of Work Safety policy, in 2013 Eurostat registered for the EU-28 area more than 3.1 million of work-load non-fatal accidents with at least four calendar days of absence from work, and 3647 fatal accidents. In 1994 Italy adopted the EU 89/931 Directive on work safety with the 626 Legislative Decree 626, substituted in 2008 by the 81/08 Legislative Decree, which introduced the risk-based decision making concept. In this paper the impact of Safety Work laws on the Italian occupational accident domain is investigated. A detailed study to assess the evolution of non-fatal and fatal accidents is presented, analyzing the Italian occupational accident data-base before the 626 Legislative Decree (1994), and after the enforcement of the main Safety Work laws. Due to the economic, political and social evolution occurred from 1994, a discussion on the factors able to influence the productivity trend is also provided
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