Ergonomic evaluation of a new truck seat design: a field study

A postural evaluation of commercial licensed truck drivers was conducted to determine the ergonomic benefits of a truck seat prototype in comparison with an industry standard seat. Twenty commercially licensed truck drivers were recruited to perform a 90-min driving task. Postures were assessed using accelerometers and a backrest and seat pan pressure mapping system. Subjective discomfort measurements were monitored using two questionnaires: ratings of perceived discomfort (RPD) and the automotive seating discomfort questionnaire (ASDQ). Participants reported significantly higher discomfort scores when sitting in the industry standard seat. Participants sat with more lumbar lordosis and assumed a more extended thoracic posture when seated in the prototype. Pairing the gluteal backrest panel with the adjustable seat pan also helped reduce the average sitting pressure on both the seat pan and the backrest. The prototype provided several postural benefits for commercially certified truck drivers, as it did for a young and healthy population.     

桥式起重机安全评估指标体系研究和系统设计

在对桥式起重机的设计、结构组成和常见事故故障资料进行调查研究的基础上,分析了桥式起重机在工程应用中遇到的不安全因素,建立了较完善的安全评估指标体系。设计了一种基于模糊神经网络的桥式起重机安全评估系统并对系统的软件功能设计进行了初步探讨。建立了模糊神经网络评估数学模型,利用MATLAB工具对模型进行了仿真验证,结果表明此模型是可行的。通过研究,为进一步针对桥式起重机展开定性、定量评估及安全管理与决策提供了有益参考     

Occupational safety and health as an element of a complex compensation system evaluation within an organization

Occupational safety and health (OSH) plays a significant role in today’s organizations, because it helps in attracting and retaining employees as well as molding their attitudes and behaviors at work. This is why the issue of OSH is stressed in a comprehensive approach to employee rewards: the total reward concept. This article explains how OSH may be included in a complex evaluation process of the compensation system. Although the literature on the effectiveness of employee compensation refers mainly to financial and non-financial components, there is a need for inclusion of working conditions in such analyses. An evaluation of the compensation system that incorporates OSH can drive many benefits for both the organization and employees. Obtaining such benefits, however, requires systematic evaluation of the reward system, including OSH. Incorporation of OSH issue within the comprehensive analysis of compensation systems promotes responsible behavior of all stakeholders.     

An index to account for safety and controllability during the design of a chemical process

Inherent safety is well known as the best technique of risk management, but its implementation is a challenge when there is a conflict with other factors, in particular with the process dynamic performance when the application of the minimization principle is considered. In this work, a combined safety-controllability index applicable during the design stage of a process is presented. The index accounts for the process controllability and the risk of the chemical inventory inside the process. The condition number is used to assess controllability, and the quantitative risk analysis technique is carried out to obtain a distance of affectation as a metric for individual risk. The index, based on a combination of normalized values of metrics for controllability and risk, was applied to three case studies dealing with distillation processes that separate flammable and toxic chemicals. The effect of relevant design variables such as column diameter and residence time was analyzed. It is shown how conflicts between safety and controllability exist for different values of those design variables and how a proper controllability-risk compromise can be identified with the use of the proposed index.     

A new coal pillars design method in order to enhance safety of the retreat mining in room and pillar mines

Most of the proposed methods for coal pillar design determine pillar dimensions using pillar load estimation only through the tributary area theory. Designing pillar based on these methods is not appropriate in room and pillar mines with pillar recovery because retreat mining and gob creation generate abutment loads. Neglecting abutment loads in design stage may lead to pillar failure and destructive effects during retreat mining. Thus proper pillar design has a remarkable effect on mining safety. In this paper, a step-by-step method is presented to design pillars with square shape in room and pillar mines with regard to existing pillars in the active mining zone (AMZ) and estimating abutment loads according to experimental equations. A decrease in pillar failure risk during retreat mining is the most significant benefit of this method. This method has been applied to determine optimum pillar dimensions in the main panel of Tabas Central Mine (TCM), located in the mid-eastern part of Iran. Obtained results show the abutment loads account for 27% of the total loads applied on pillars in AMZ in this panel. Pillar width, based on this method, is also obtained 11.6 m.     

An integrated framework of safety performance evaluation for oil and gas production plants: Application to a petroleum transportation station

Safety performance evaluation is a significant way to ensure the safety of oil and gas production plants. Various evaluation methods have been proposed to make safety evaluation more consistent and scientific. However, a major concern is that many existing safety evaluation measurements are still subjective and are not easy to obtain in a uniform way, which can be attributed to the challenges that process plants faced such as people having different knowledge levels, equipment with dispersed locations and management with many processes. This paper aims to display the impact of risk factors on system safety level in a succinct and visual way that may be expected to overcome subjective opinions from experts and provide a more pertinent and practical safety strategies. To this end, an integrated framework is developed, which considers crucial risk factors from pipeline, static equipment, dynamic equipment and management. First, Fault tree analysis (FTA) is used to explicitly determine the crucial r risk factors. Then, a novel fuzzy cognitive map cooperating with relative degree analysis model (FCM-RDA) is proposed to deal with the weigh distribution opinions. Finally, considering the oil and gas production process is a complex system, a fuzzy comprehensive evaluation (FCE) is employed to calculate the overall safety level.     

An overview to CERSSO's self evaluation of the cost-benefit on the investment in occupational safety and health in the textile factories: "a step by step methodology"

INTRODUCTION: The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and CERSSO collaborated to develop a new Tool Kit (TK), which became available in May 2002. PAHO already had a TK in place, and CERSSO requested that one be developed for their needs. CERSSO wanted to enable managers and line workers in garment factories to self-diagnose plant and workstation hazards and to estimate the costs and benefits of investing in occupational safety and health (OSH) as a way to improve productivity and competitiveness. METHODS: For consistency, the collaborating organizations agreed to construct the TK according to PAHO's methodology. The instrument was developed to be comprehensive enough that any user can collect the data easily. It integrates epidemiologic, risk assessment, clinic, engineering, and accountability issues, organized to include step-by-step training in: (a) performing risk assessments in the workplaces (risk factors); (b) making cause-effect relationships; (c) improving decision making on OSH interventions; (d) doing calculations of direct and indirect costs and savings; and (e) doing calculation of the overall cost-benefit of OSH interventions. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: Since July 2002, about 2,400 employees and officials from 736 garment factories, Ministries of Labor, Health, Social Security Institutes, and Technical Training Institutions of Central America and the Dominican Republic have used this instrument. Systematically, they have calculated a positive relationship of the investment (3 to 33 times). Employers are now aware of the financial rewards of investing in OSH. The TK is available in Spanish, Korean, and English. In July 2003, a software program in Spanish and English was developed (180 persons have been trained in the region), which requires less time to execute with better reliability.