The Prevention of Industrial Manual Tool Accidents Considering Occupational Health and Safety

Abstract

The industrial sector is improving its management systems and designing healthy workspaces by focusing on selecting the best ways to reduce accidents and optimize financial and human resources. Hand tools represent the general equipment used in a significant range of industrial jobs. This research aims to develop a tool selection method to help users, managers, and tool designers ensure awareness and care regarding ergonomics based on the anthropometrics of employees, considering the main risk factors for tool selection. The information, which relates to hand security risk factors and the established parameters set by official international institutions, is evaluated during the study. This paper also presents a safety risk assessment framework based on criteria collected through a survey from 10 experts to rate the initial risk value and determine its importance using the analytical hierarchy process (AHP). As a result, the analysis identified the possibility of injury (with 73.06% accuracy) as the biggest concern for companies due to its immediate effects on workers’ health. It provides a decision regimen—a tool for decision-makers to design and plan prevention activities to reduce accidents, injuries, and possible illnesses. It further lays out a methodical and analytical model to be used by managers to ensure correct hand tool selection. This model can be used to reduce the possibility of illnesses or injuries for workers and tailor the ergonomic design of each workstation according to specific hand anthropometric data for the worker.