1,721,001 research outputs found
Accidents at work: an insight into logistics operations
No full textThe logistics industry ensures the delivery and storage of goods and materials around the world, covering both the distribution and the warehousing sectors of every industry. The injury rate of the logistics industry is notable and above the average compared to other industries. The high accident rate of the logistics industry is partly due to the significant weight and size of some of the items handled and the vehicles and equipment required to handle them. Also, logistics entails workers moving between different work areas or sites during the day, each of which have many different safety measures, procedures, and approaches to risk management. This paper introduces a structured analysis of occupational accidents that occurred during logistics operations. The investigation includes more than 900 fatal and serious accidents that occurred in Italy between 2002 and 2016, involving workers from the logistics industry. The findings show that the contact of the injured worker with moving objects or vehicles, the variation of movement of the vehicle or transport system, and the falling of objects from above were the most common types of accidents that occurred in logistics. Industrial trucks were the most frequent risk factors that triggered the investigated events. Material handling was the activity that the injured workers were usually performing when the accidents occurred. The leading apparent causes of accidents were the voluntary adoption of an improper procedure, e.g. the bypass of a risk control measure, and the misplacement of the worker. The lack of training appears to be the leading root cause of the investigated events
Learn from the past and act for the future: A holistic and participative approach for improving occupational health and safety in industry
No full textThe European working population is significantly ageing. This trend is expected to increase in the next years. In this context, occupational health and safety strategies need to evolve, developing return-to-work procedures and workplace modifications to avoid long-term sickness absence and early retirement. Safety management strategies should consider age related factors, so that every worker, regardless of age, feels safe and committed to reach personal and corporate goals. This study proposes a holistic approach based on a participatory methodology to identify the causes of workplace hazards and to improve occupational health and safety in industry. The first step supports the identification of the root causes of accidents and injuries. The second step involves the participation of the workers in the analysis of the consequences and the causes of safety issues in their workplace. The last step investigates the process deficiencies that may impact on the safety performances of the work system. The participatory technique adopted in this paper is the focus group with the workers, based on the fault tree analysis method. The findings suggest that the causes of unsafe work conditions may be the result of inefficiencies and deficits in the work process. The proposed approach allows multiple benefits, including an increased commitment of the workers and an improved safety culture within the organization. Such improvements are critical, especially when a relevant part of the workforce includes aged workers with multiple years of experience with the investigated tasks and, consequently, prolonged time of exposure to the same risk factors
Order picking: A comparison of heuristic and meta-heuristic approaches
No full textThis paper investigates the impact of several routing strategies on minimization of the travel-time for pickers in a manual warehouse. Many solutions have been proposed in literature over the last years, however, just a few authors really compare them on equal terms in order to carry out a proper comparison. In this work, three well-known heuristic strategies (i.e. S-Shape, Largest Gap, and Combined) are firstly compared to each other and then with two metaheuristic algorithms owning to swarm intelligence family (i.e. Ant Colony Optimization and Particle Swarm Optimization). Firstly, an empirical study has been made to find out the best setting for meta-heuristics’ parameters. Then, a discrete event simulation model has been developed by using both Python© and Cython© programming languages, and the analyzed strategies have been compared under several storage assignment policies
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Life Cycle Analsis of a Hydraulic Gear Motor
No full textIn this paper, the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) methodology is applied to assess the environmental performance of the production and usage of an aspirator/compressor for zootechnical application. The processes were analysed to investigate the whole production system from “cradle to grave”, considering the main phases: raw material production, component manufacturing, pump assembly, installation process, utilisation and disposal cycles. All the input/output streams of energy and mass were analysed and the environmental impact was rated with the aim of “Eco-Indicator ‘99” assessing method. The obtained results are evaluated and presented, and possible modifications of the system are suggested to obtain suitable improvements
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