Prioritizing the ILO/IEA Ergonomic Checkpoints' measures; a study in an assembly and packaging industry

The Ergonomic Checkpoints of International Labour Organization provide simple and low cost solutions to improve work conditions. Since it is a useful guide to improve the workplace, it can be a powerful tool for detecting and estimating work-related risk factors by considering the risk score for each item. This study presents an approach to prioritize and score the measures of the Checkpoints using Analytic Network Process (ANP) and Fuzzy Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) methods. These methods have been accomplished in partnership with ergonomics experts. They compared the risk factors of the solutions with respect to five ergonomic criteria which are determined by themselves. Also a model has been developed to score the measures for each workplace. An empirical study was done in an assembly and packaging industry to illustrate an example of using the weighted Checkpoints. The findings of the empirical study indicated that the weighted Ergonomic Checkpoints manual is able to estimate the approximate risk of workplaces and detect the riskier situations.