Selection of Personal Protective Equipment - a complex issue of multi-criteria analysis

Armand-Radu Haraga,Anişoara Corăbieru,Alin-Marian Cazac,Nicoleta-Monica Lohan,Stefan-Lucian Toma,N.F Cofaru,M Inţă

doi:10.1051/matecconf/202134310012

Abstract

It is known the fact that in both the Member States of the European Union and the United States, the provision of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to workers who are carrying out their activity in different sectors is done in accordance with existing legislation and regulations specific to each state. However, choosing a suitable PPE for a particular workplace is a difficult task to perform given that there are a variety of PPE on the market that perform, in different ways these functions: to prevent an accident - from the same place of work. to protect the health and safety of workers and to minimize damage from any possible accident. Comparing the alternatives, in order to find the most favourable protective equipment specific to a particular workplace, is a complex multi-criteria decision problem that sometimes is difficult to solve. In this paper we approached a method of multi-criteria analysis of the decision, respectively we applied a Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) to select PPE -favourable to a certain job: mechanical locksmith. Our work allowed us to find the dominant criteria and the critical factors in the products evaluation, multi-criteria evaluation AHP of employees’ requirements, regarding PPE and ergonomic aspects.

Highlights

In the last period of time, the workers in safety and health at work have been more concerned with granting Protective Equipment (PPE), according to the existing legislation and regulations so as to ensure a safe workplace, [1, 2]
The multitude of personal protective equipment currently on the market sometimes makes it impossible to make the optimal choice of work equipment suitable for a particular workplace so as that equipment to ensure maximum safety
Our problem of multicriteria decision is a matter of choice in which we look for the best variant of a safety helmet for industrial use adequate for a workplace, non-dominant of three alternatives {A1, A2, A3} whose technical characteristics are presented in table 1

Summary

Introduction

In the last period of time, the workers in safety and health at work have been more concerned with granting PPE, according to the existing legislation and regulations so as to ensure a safe workplace, [1, 2]. The multitude of personal protective equipment currently on the market sometimes makes it impossible to make the optimal choice of work equipment suitable for a particular workplace so as that equipment to ensure maximum safety. It was considered that the selection of an individual work equipment is not a technical procedure, being rather a subjective and uncertain process, [3, 4]. It depends on the evaluation of the objectives, on the measurable criteria (ex: acquisition costs, maintenance costs, etc.) as well as on subjective criteria (compatibility, ergonomics, technical factors, etc.). M. [7], showed that in obtaining of a good decision it matters both the choice of an adequate structuring of the decision problem and the choice of a solution method

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion