Issue:
While a common tool for engineers, optimisation models, such as those used in operations research, rarely include OHS aspects. This project aims to integrate occupational health and safety aspects into operations research optimization models usable by senior decision makers engaged in design and management of their operations.
Objectives:
The objective of this project is to extend, apply, and field test a general modelling approach that can examine the dynamic OHS impacts of design decisions and their risk implications in terms of the extended financial impacts of musculoskeletal disorders on productivity and quality of the products or services over a period of time up to the system life-span. This optimization model would allow senior decision makers to test their assumptions and ideas for alternative designs in terms of costs, OHS, and performance in order to identify optimal solutions for their specific contexts.
Anticipated Results:
This study will result in a set of modelling elements and procedures from two very different sectors that will form the nucleus of a ‘library’ of model routines for application in different contexts in the future. Furthermore, it will generate knowledge of both the models’ performance characteristics, and of how users’ perceive the tool’s utility.
Investigators:
Mohamed Wahab Mohamed Ismail, W. Patrick Neumann (Ryerson University), Linda M.O. Rose (KTH, The Royal Institute of Technology), Ahmad Sobhani (Ryerson University)
