Abstract
Occupational safety and health (OSH) inspection is an essential element of OSH regulatory enforcement programs. The effectiveness of regulated OSH inspections is dependent on many factors of which proper planning and scheduling of inspections, and optimum utilization of inspectors are extremely important. In spite of this, there is no published scheduling model to solve the problem of regulated safety inspections. Absence of such models negatively affected the performance of safety inspectorates in many countries which is manifested by low portion of firms being inspected over long periods of time. For these, there is urgent need to introduce new scheduling models to solve such problem that has distinctive characteristics compared to the scheduling problems in other fields. The current paper presents a novel hybrid macro and micro scheduling approach that is based on Probability Integral Transform (PIT) and a modified Bin Packing algorithm that address the Inspector Utilization Problem with Firm Inspection Sharing (IUPFISh). The PIT-IUPFISh model consists of uniform long-term macro scheduling of firms for inspection using PIT approach coupled with short-term micro scheduling of firm inspection using the IUPFISh algorithm to determine the daily scheduling of the firms and inspectors so that maximum utilization of inspectors is achieved. A case study was presented to show the application of the proposed model. The results indicate that the application of the proposed model can improve OSH inspectorate performance through improved planning and scheduling as well as maximizing effective utilization of manpower.
Highlights
The International Labor Organization (ILO) identified labor inspection as an essential component of a national occupational safety and health (OSH) system [1]
A second objective of the current study is to propose a solution for OSH inspection micro scheduling problem by modeling it as an Inspector Utilization Problem with Firm Inspection Sharing (IUPFISh), which is based on the BPP, for achieving maximum utilization of inspectors
The current study presents a novel hybrid Probability Integral Transform (PIT)-IUPFISh approach for scheduling regulated programmed safety inspections
Summary
The International Labor Organization (ILO) identified labor inspection as an essential component of a national occupational safety and health (OSH) system [1]. One objective of the current study is to develop a macro scheduling model that can achieve uniform inspection activities of large number of firms throughout the timeframe of the inspection plan regardless of the distribution type of firm priority index while considering inspector’s capacity. The packed items are the firms being scheduled for inspection, their sizes are the times needed to complete firm inspection, the bins are the inspectors themselves, and the maximum bin capacity is the inspector daily working hours. A second objective of the current study is to propose a solution for OSH inspection micro scheduling problem by modeling it as an Inspector Utilization Problem with Firm Inspection Sharing (IUPFISh), which is based on the BPP, for achieving maximum utilization of inspectors.
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