evaluation of importance of safety behaviors in a steel manufacturer by entropy

This study aimed to evaluate the workers safety behavior and to determine the importance of each unsafe behavior in an Iranian steel manufacturing company. This study was conducted in Mobareke steel manufacturing company, which is located in the middle of Iran, in 2007. The methodology was based on the safety behavior sampling [SBS] technique and entropy. After specifying the unsafe behaviors and with reference to the results of a pilot study a sample of 3248 was determined, with a sampling accuracy of 5% and confidence level of 95%. The results indicated that 41.8% of workers behaviors were unsafe, The most frequent unsafe behaviors were inappropriate use of personal protective equipments [PPEs] with 32% of total unsafe behaviors. The results also notified a significant relationship between age, job experience and educational level on unsafe behaviors [P<0.05]. The highest weight, which is obtained by entropy, belongs to using inappropriate tools with weight of 0.1425. The ultimate findings of the study showed that a considerable number of workers' behaviors were unsafe, which is one of the main antecedents of industrial accidents. Considering catastrophic consequences of accidents in steel manufacturing industry, the results emphasize on diminishing unsafe behaviors and recommends applying behavior based safety principles

Integrated health, safety, environment and ergonomic management systems for industry

Conventional health, safety and environment [HSE] are a widely used approach to enhance availability and efficiency of complex systems. The integrated HSEE system is defined however as integration of conventional HSE with ergonomics approach. The presented HSEE system introduces a unique, effective and systemic mechanism, which integrates the structure of the human and organizational systems with conventional HSE system. It is utilized to enhance reliability, availability, maintainability and safety through the proposed integrated framework of this study. The integrated HSEE is developed by integration of conventional HSE with job systems by re-engineering organizational structures and teamwork through electronic data interchange [EDI]. To show the need for and superiority of HSEE over conventional HSE to gas Treatment Company was studied and questionnaires were collected and examined with respect to distinct components of HSEE. The main result of this study is a framework for development of integrated intelligent human engineering environment in complex critical systems. The presented HSEE system introduces a unique, effective and systemic mechanism, which integrates the structure of the human and organizational systems with conventional HSE system