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Assessing and facilitating warehouse safety
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate how warehouse safety can be assessed and facilitated.
Methodology – Through a literature study, we build a theoretical framework to provide insights in how safety in Logistics Service Providers (LSPs) can be assessed and facilitated. We perform a case study at a large Dutch LSP using interviews and questionnaires to determine the relevance of the sub-dimensions to assess warehouse safety.
Findings – Using literature, we identify people, procedures and technology related sub-dimensions of safety culture and safety behavior and factors that may affect how safety culture translates to safety behavior. Using a case study our findings indicate which sub-dimensions and influencing factors LSP employees find important and why. We found differences in the importance assigned to safety, which may point to the existence of sub-cultures across warehouses.
Research limitations/implications – This paper contributes to the limited existing warehouse safety literature in which the factors that influence safety are not well explored. Although the case study investigates one LSP and as such does not generalize across LSPs, it provides valuable insights in important aspects of safety and how they can be influenced.
Practical implications – This paper offers safety managers insights in how to assess and facilitate safety within their warehouses.
Originality – Although warehouse safety is important, there is scarce academic research that explores this issue.
... In the realm of Human Factors, Grosse et al. ( , 2017 and Tompa et al. (2010) have contributed literature reviews aimed at comprehending the nuances of human factors and ergonomic interventions in manual warehouses. For Safety, De Koster et al. (2011), De Vries et al. (2016b), and Hofstra et al. (2018 utilized survey methodologies to explore safety antecedents. Gajšek et al. (2017) conducted a survey involving 12 Slovenian logistic companies to discern employers' concerns about worker health, with 132 respondents participating. ...
... Fatigue Calzavara et al. (2018) Matching of heart rate monitor data with that of motion capture system Scheduling of worker's activities so that to avoid high value of heart rate for a long duration Zhao et al. (2019) The heart rate can be considered dynamic and also the worker did not recovers completely after rest and qualititative analysis is required to understand the after effects Granotto et al. (2019) The consideration of multiple operators and multiple aisle system in bucket brigade order picking system Vries et al. (2016a, b, c) The longterm effects of a manager's safety leadership on factors such as employee well-being, turnover, and organizational commitment Hofstra et al. (2018) Investigate the difference between safety in an organization's self-established warehouses versus its acquired warehouses Hofstra et al. (2018) Compare the values attched to safety aspect in different countries and backgrounds Hofstra et al. (2018) Empirical research to further develop safety culture and safety behaviour ...
... Fatigue Calzavara et al. (2018) Matching of heart rate monitor data with that of motion capture system Scheduling of worker's activities so that to avoid high value of heart rate for a long duration Zhao et al. (2019) The heart rate can be considered dynamic and also the worker did not recovers completely after rest and qualititative analysis is required to understand the after effects Granotto et al. (2019) The consideration of multiple operators and multiple aisle system in bucket brigade order picking system Vries et al. (2016a, b, c) The longterm effects of a manager's safety leadership on factors such as employee well-being, turnover, and organizational commitment Hofstra et al. (2018) Investigate the difference between safety in an organization's self-established warehouses versus its acquired warehouses Hofstra et al. (2018) Compare the values attched to safety aspect in different countries and backgrounds Hofstra et al. (2018) Empirical research to further develop safety culture and safety behaviour ...
Humans play a pivotal role in the manual order picking process within warehouses. Warehouse pickers engage in repetitive tasks that can lead to fatigue, physical discomfort, and injuries. Recognizing the importance of human well-being, it becomes imperative to integrate human factors into the design and operations of warehouses. This paper undertakes a comprehensive examination of ergonomic concerns discussed in prior research. The identified studies are organized into thematic categories such as Technological Interventions, Assignment, Human Factors, Learning, Fatigue, Pallet Selection, Load Speed Variation, Safety and Incentive. Further research is suggested in safety and incentive studies to enhance ergonomic practices in warehouses.These categories are further segmented based on research methodologies, encompassing mathematical, experimental, and theoretical studies. Many studies applied multi-objective and Mixed Integer Programming models with heuristics and meta-heuristics to address ergonomic considerations. Few studies suggested exact solutions, indicating an opportunity for further research in precise modeling. Additionally, the paper offers a nuanced analysis of core themes and utilizes Bibliometric tools to extract critical insights from the existing literature. The analysis highlighted Germany and Italy as prominent contributors to ergonomic research in warehouses. Managerial perspectives and potential avenues for future research are also presented in this paper. Integrating ergonomic-focused thematic areas offers warehouse managers practical solutions for improved productivity and employee well-being, balancing economic and ergonomic goals.
... According to a study by [12], warehousing issues can lead to delays in the delivery of chemical products, which can have serious consequences for the industry. The authors identified several challenges in warehousing, such as insufficient space, inadequate material handling equipment, and lack of proper inventory management systems. ...
... Poor supervision in warehousing [19] B15 Improper handling of chemicals [11] B16 Nature of products [12] B17 Poor road quality [12] B18 Poor connectivity [14] B19 Uncertain transit times [14] B20 Poor container labelling [15] involved in enhancing efficiency. The data is collected using 5-point Likert scale that ranges from 4-very high important-to 0-no important. ...
... Poor supervision in warehousing [19] B15 Improper handling of chemicals [11] B16 Nature of products [12] B17 Poor road quality [12] B18 Poor connectivity [14] B19 Uncertain transit times [14] B20 Poor container labelling [15] involved in enhancing efficiency. The data is collected using 5-point Likert scale that ranges from 4-very high important-to 0-no important. ...
... Below is the author's definition of the scope for examining safety problems with VR in intralogistics systems. The proposed scope was developed based on practical experience as well as the issues discussed in the literature [10,14,20,47,48,[51][52][53][54][55][56]. ...
... Safety management measures and methods should holistically approach the issue of ensuring safety, prioritizing human well-being above all else. As Hofstra et al. [10] indicate, safety in intralogistics results from a combination of safety culture and safety behavior. However, procedural and technical conditions should also be recognized as significant factors, as highlighted in the safety culture classification provided by Hofstra et al. [10]. ...
... As Hofstra et al. [10] indicate, safety in intralogistics results from a combination of safety culture and safety behavior. However, procedural and technical conditions should also be recognized as significant factors, as highlighted in the safety culture classification provided by Hofstra et al. [10]. ...
Immersive technologies from the spectrum of Industry 4.0, such as Virtual Reality (VR), are increasingly used in research and safety analysis in industrial and intralogistics systems, including distribution warehouses and production plants. Safety in intralogistics systems is influenced by design and management processes, human behavior, and device performance. In all these areas, VR can serve as a supportive technology for visualization, testing, and employee training. However, this requires the development of principles for integrating VR into standard procedures for the design, modernization, and analysis of intralogistics and production systems. This article discusses the use of VR to analyze the occupational and functional safety of intralogistics systems. It reviews the literature and VR implementations aimed at examining and improving safety in industrial systems. The article explores the integration of VR into the design and analysis procedures for intralogistics and production systems. The authors present a five-dimensional decision space for assessing the use of VR, including identifying subjects of safety analysis, threats and hazards specific to intralogistics, countermeasures for these threats, factors affecting safety, and mechanisms by which VR can improve safety in intralogistics systems. As a subsequent step, the authors discuss using universal simulation environments that support VR technology to study and enhance safety in intralogistics systems, providing a framework example based on the FlexSim (2023 update 2) environment. Finally, this article addresses the threats and limitations of VR technology, along with the challenges and future prospects of VR in the context of Industry 4.0. The article concludes that VR can be an essential tool for increasing safety in the future, albeit with some reservations about certain features of this technology.
... For instance, allocating a bulky or heavy item to an elevated rack increases the risk of injury. AI-based technologies represent an opportunity to mitigate safety concerns in warehouse environments [13] by providing safety-oriented optimal solutions to the industrial SLAP. ...
... Potential health and injury risks are increasing due to the rapid growth and labor-intensive nature of warehousing operations; however, existing research on warehouse safety is scarce [13]. There is a significant negative relation between the presence of safe work procedures (as one of the safety management practices) and safety performance outcomes, such as accident rates [43]. ...
... Occupational safety in the rapidly proliferated warehouse industry is exposed to increasing potential health and injury risks. Warehousing operations are labor-and equipment-intensive and require massive material handling under time pressure, thus easily causing incidents (Hofstra et al., 2018). According to the data released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2019, the average rate of recorded injuries in the warehousing industry was 4.8 for every 100 full-time workers (Attia, 2021). ...
... It was proved to mitigate cold-induced accidents and promote operational efficiency. The authors (Hofstra et al., 2018) addressed the assessment of warehouse safety, the development of safety culture, and the translation from safety culture to safety behavior, which was instantiated by a case study in a logistics service provider. A real-time location system could enable a spatialtemporal analysis to identify potential risks behind operations, like congestion recognition and driver patterns in intersections (Halawa et al., 2020Guo et al., 2021. ...
Occupational safety and health (OSH) has always been a big concern in the labor-intensive warehouse industry, especially under peculiar circumstances like a low temperature. Accordingly, this paper aims to propose a framework of a smart system using the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and digital twin (DT) technologies to realize real-time occupational safety monitoring in the warehouse and ensure synchronized cyber-physical spaces for information traceability and visibility. The unsupervised deep neural structure of stacked auto-encoder (SAE) is designed to identify abnormal stationary from human motion status, which is perceived as a sign of potential accident. The model is developed to automatically update online by cooperating with calibration samples so as to keep in accordance with the evolution of surroundings. The Bluetooth low energy (BLE) and a log-distance path loss model are used to fulfill indoor localization in order for managers to promptly respond to an incident on site. Besides, some intelligent services are enabled to promote the efficiency of safety management. A real-life case study is carried out in an air cargo cold storage warehouse to illustrate the viability and rationality of the proposed system and methods. The elaboration of the implementation is envisioned to facilitate replication and reproduction effectively. The impact of learning features concerned with distance and vibration on the performance of anomaly detection has also been analyzed by experiments. The insights and lessons gained in this study hold the promise of providing a reference or sparking new ideas for researchers and practitioners to meet similar needs in practice.
... Warehouse safety is highly influenced by the warehouse operations (De et al., 2011). A few studies have focused on identifying the causes of accidents in a warehouse and suggesting solutions to improve safety (De et al., 2011;Boehning, 2014;Trab et al., 2015;Hofstra et al., 2018). In addition, several studies have focused on improving the operational efficiency (Zhang et al., 2009;Estanjini et al., 2011) and reducing traffic congestion (AlHalawani and Mitra, 2015). ...
... Based on analyzing operations management, safety, and organizational behavior research, several factors that affect the safety performance in the warehouse have been identified such as hazard reducing system, safety specific transformational leadership, and safety consciousness (De et al., 2011). The factors that influence the safety behavior of the warehouse workers have been investigated by (Hofstra et al., 2018). The study shows the importance of technology and leadership to minimize safety accidents in the warehouse. ...
As a real time location system (RTLS) can provide positioning and tracking of forklifts and other mobile entities in a warehouse, the integration of RTLS into a data system has a significant potential to enhance safety and improve efficiency. The objective of this research is to demonstrate how RTLS technology can be leveraged to enhance the warehouse safety and operational efficiency via a real warehouse case study. The research is implemented using a novel three-phase framework to introduce the RTLS technology in the warehouse. The first phase evaluates available RTLS technology. Market research has been conducted to compare different RTLS technologies, and the outcome of this phase suggests that the ultra-wide band (UWB) is the best technology for indoor positioning and tracking in the warehouse with respect to several metrics. The second phase is the technology implementation, which aims to integrate RTLS with other existing warehouse operation systems, i.e., the warehouse management system (WMS) and the forklift fleet management system (FFMS). In this phase, light is shed on current challenges and proposed solutions of RTLS data accuracy and synchronization. The final phase is post-implementation, in which several methods and data visualization tools are proposed to tackle safety and operational issues. A real warehouse in the US has been used as a case study to evaluate the proposed framework. In particular, the following analyses have been conducted using the actual RTLS data: 1) harshness in braking, 2) compliance to routing policies, 3) driver patterns in intersections, 4) congestion identification and prevention, 5) speed per zone, 6) impact analysis, and 7) faults analysis. The results suggest that the proposed framework has a great potential to advance the current warehouse solutions one step forward to realize smart warehouse operations.
... Safety is always the priority for both the companies as well as employees in any company [31] and warehouse operations are no exception. According to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics [32], warehousing and transport sector have the second highest number of fatalities in the USA. ...
... According to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics [32], warehousing and transport sector have the second highest number of fatalities in the USA. Warehouse operations are highly labor-intensive and involve material handlings [33], with heavy equipment/vehicles moving around [31] and immense time pressure [34] makes this sector more vulnerable to safety. Therefore, it is extremely important to ensure that all necessary measures and practices are in place to ensure the safety of all. ...
... Safety is always the priority for both the companies as well as employees in any company [31] and warehouse operations are no exception. According to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics [32], warehousing and transport sector have the second highest number of fatalities in the USA. ...
... According to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics [32], warehousing and transport sector have the second highest number of fatalities in the USA. Warehouse operations are highly labor-intensive and involve material handlings [33], with heavy equipment/vehicles moving around [31] and immense time pressure [34] makes this sector more vulnerable to safety. Therefore, it is extremely important to ensure that all necessary measures and practices are in place to ensure the safety of all. ...
... Similarly, Hofstra et al. (2018) examined how warehouse safety can be assessed and facilitated by Logistics Service Providers (LSPs). On the other hand, Cantini et al. (2020) implemented a spaghetti chart to analyze the layout as well as the movement of the forklifts in order to reduce the risk of collision between forklifts and improve the operators' safety. ...
Citation: Andrejić, M. & Pajić, V. (2024). Managing warehouse risks for 3PL providers: A novel approach based on FMECA-DEA. J. Organ. Technol. Entrep., 2(2), 113-121. https://doi.org/10.56578/jote020204. Abstract: Warehousing serves as a critical component in the logistics chain, functioning as an intersection for inbound and outbound flows of goods before distribution to end customers. Given the complexity of warehousing operations, which involve numerous processes, activities, and workforce engagement, significant risks are inherently present. Consequently, a comprehensive risk analysis is imperative for effective risk management. Such analysis informs risk evaluation and facilitates the determination of appropriate mitigation strategies, with the goal of prioritising risks based on their potential impact. The objective of this study is to present a novel approach for risk assessment in warehouses operated by third-party logistics (3PL) companies, employing a combination of Failure Modes, Effects, and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The proposed framework aims to optimise risk prioritisation and to support the implementation of targeted preventive and corrective measures, thereby enhancing workplace safety and operational efficiency. This approach has been applied to a case study of a 3PL provider operating in the Serbian market, where 14 specific risks were identified and assessed. The most critical risks included falls from height, items falling from shelves during handling, forklift operations, and machinery-related risks involving packaging machines, electrical equipment, industrial cleaners, heaters, and forklift battery charging-particularly with regard to potential explosion hazards due to hydrogen gas release and acid spills. Based on the risk assessment, a series of preventive and corrective measures were formulated to mitigate the identified risks, thereby reducing the likelihood of occupational incidents, injuries, and fatalities. The integration of FMECA and DEA has been demonstrated as an effective methodology for systematically evaluating risks in warehouse operations, offering a robust basis for improving safety measures in logistics environments.
... The influence of team leaders on safety within warehouse environments was investigated, with a focus on the practices of a Logistics Service Provider (LSP) company [6]. Concurrently, the Hazard Identification, Risk Assessment and Risk Control (HIRARC) method was employed in maritime warehouse settings to identify potential hazards, with the research underpinned by interviews and observations, culminating in the determination of twelve risk factors [7]. ...
The imperatives of occupational health and safety (OHS) are increasingly recognised as critical components of business operations, particularly within logistics where manual tasks such as item picking and transportation present notable hazards. This study employs the Fine-Kinney method to conduct a risk analysis of internal transport activities in logistics systems. Hazards associated with various internal transport mediums are systematically identified and categorised. An illustrative case study involves a logistics provider based in Serbia, scrutinising the risks prevalent within warehouse operations. Through application of the Fine-Kinney method, the analysis determines the predominant risk to be collisions involving pedestrians. In response, the study advocates targeted preventive and corrective strategies to diminish these risks. Theoretical and practical contributions arise from addressing these identified risks, offering valuable insights for logistics enterprises. The emphasis on preemptive safety measures underscores their significance in safeguarding worker welfare and enhancing the efficiency of logistics operations.
... Therefore, it is the right moment now to study the OHS practices in manufacturing and trading organizations, and Bulgaria is the right place to conduct such kind of research. Previous studies found insufficient knowledge in this field [13], as well as the need to apply an interdisciplinary research approach when conducting studies [14]. In addition, workers in small and mediumsized organizations are among the most at risk of injuries at work [15]. ...
Occupational health and safety (OHS) of warehouse workers is a crucial issue for warehouse managers. The importance of OHS practices has increased over recent years due both to high levels of fatal accidents in the logistics industry, and chronic shortage of labor in the sector, which requires systematic efforts to reduce absenteeism and increase warehouse employee motivation. This article aims to address the current state of some fundamental OHS practices of warehouse workers in Bulgarian manufacturing and trading organizations, and to outline some recommendations for their future improvements. The data were collected using the questionnaire survey method among 91 manufacturing and trading organizations in Bulgaria, which operate warehouses, and were processed using Chi-square analysis. The results show that the share of trading organizations, which implement OHS practices is lower, in comparison with surveyed manufacturing organizations. In addition, small organizations lag behind medium and large regarding the use of fundamental measures to protect warehouse workers. The main research findings indicate that there is a need to expand the frequency of OHS practices applied in trading organizations through a wider implementation of joint firefighting drills with fire and emergency safety authorities, adaptation of warehouse infrastructure, clear designation of emergency exits and placement of signs/work instructions for safe work at workplaces. Furthermore, it is critical to increase the use of appropriate work clothing and personal protective equipment (PPE), as well as to provide regular safety briefings in trading warehouses and small organizations.
... Safety is also reflected in vehicle speed control within the company and warehouse, protection of the working atmosphere, protection from noise, fire, and explosions protection and security of racks and storage equipment, and working with hazardous materials. Special procedures must be defined for visitors, as well as for securing entrances and exits to facilities (Đurđević et al., 2022;De Koster et al., 2010;De Koster et al., 2011;Hofstra et al., 2018). ...
The importance of efficient logistics processes in literature and practice has been recognized. In this paper, a new methodological approach for logistics process improvement, Logistics Field Audit (LFA) is proposed. The approach comprises seven interconnected steps: identification of needs and goals for LFA; priority definition of different LFA aspects for different subsystems; processes mapping, audit, and questionnaire preparation; implementation in each subsystem according to priorities; analysis and evaluation; the definition of preventive and corrective measures, continuous improvement and periodical audit. Basic aspects of LFA such as the operational, safety, environmental, and service quality aspect are identified. The approach is applicable in both logistics and non-logistics systems with special emphasis on logistics subsystems such as procurement, distribution, transport, warehouse, etc. The paper presents a case study of a warehouse system, with an emphasis on labor safety. Four types of warehouse workers were determined. The developed methodology provides the basis for future theoretical research and practical implementation.
... In Western Europe, the latter factor is also triggered by the ageing work force and the shortage of qualified personnel in specific regions. Research has demonstrated that the company's safety culture and the warehouse leadership have an impact on worker behavior and thereby on accidents (De Koster et al., 2011;Hofstra et al., 2018). According to work of De Vries et al. (2016c), the manager's prevention focus is associated with a reduced number of accidents, and focus on safety does not trade off with productivity. ...
Warehousing operations are crucial in any supply chain, as they decouple demand and supply in time, space, and quantity. Automation has gradually changed the type and nature of operations. The first fully automated warehouse system, a so-called AS/R system, was introduced in the 1960s by Demag. Since then, warehouses have changed substantially. New storage and handling technologies and advanced IT systems have been introduced. The advent of the internet with e-commerce operations had a major impact on these developments. E-commerce operations can be characterized by large numbers of stored products, mostly small orders and large variations in the order volumes. This also has led to new robotic systems with high storage and flexible throughput capacity. Simultaneously, many activities in the warehouses are still manual. Securing a safe, ergonomic, and sustainable work environment is an important challenge. This chapter reviews the new developments in warehouse operations and the challenges they bring and suggests skills needed by managers to cope with these challenges.KeywordsAutomated warehousingE-commerce order fulfilmentHuman factorsSustainabilitySafetyIoT
... Occupation health & safety (OHS) inspection practises remaining a major concern in warehouses [3], where humans are still part of the processes despite the automation provided by Warehouse 4.0 [4]. To ensure the safety of the workers, OHS officers are responsible for monitoring and controlling workplace risks and hazards through scheduled inspections [5]. ...
Over the previous two decades, a tremendous impact has been created on each stage of the production value chain, through digitization of the traditional industrial processes and procedures. Since warehouses are at the heart of distributed supply chain networks, it is critical to leverage modern automation tools and through-engineering solutions to increase their efficiency and continuously meet the demanding standards. Towards this end, we describe the design of a health and safety (H&S) inspection robot capable of autonomously detecting hazard events without human intervention in warehouses. It makes use of computer vision (CV) techniques, edge computing (EC) and artificial intelligence (AI) to identify critical occurrences that have a detrimental impact on H&S. while counting available resources using inventory tracking methodologies. Furthermore, action-based modules are activated in response to the recognised event, informing warehouse workers about it and notifying other systems, operators and stakeholders, where appropriate, as foreseen by the protocol. Lastly, the conceptual architecture of the proposed autonomous robot is presented, which classifies the needed vision-based and action-based modules.
... In the logistics industry in The Netherlands there is broad awareness that renewal, like technological and digital innovations, is not always taken up easily by companies (Topsector Logistiek, 2019;Manpower Group, 2015), even though new technological innovations are widely available in the logistics sector. Moreover, maintaining the safety, health and wellbeing of logistics workers worldwide (e.g., warehouse workers at Amazonsee Human Impact Partners, 2021) is an important topic of interest for the sector, unions, policy makers and the media, because the transportation and warehousing accounts for a high number of fatalities (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, cited in Hofstra et al., 2018). ...
This study investigates the underexplored relationship between mindful organisational infrastructure (psychological safety, team learning, team voice, supportive leadership) and employee innovation adoption, via direct and indirect relationships of organisational mindfulness (a firm’s cultural characteristic that makes employees alert to solve issues and improve effective cooperation). We studied this through a survey among 115 managers/owners of Dutch logistics companies, a sector in which employees’ occupational health, safety and wellbeing (HSW), and sustainability topics are under pressure. The relationships were investigated using path analysis based on linear regression models. Results show that employee innovation adoption was positively related to supportive leadership, and to the presence of organisational mindfulness. The presence of team voice has an indirect relation with employee innovation adoption as it was mediated by organisational mindfulness. These findings suggest that organisations should facilitate team voice and supportive leadership, as well as organisational mindfulness to successfully achieve employee innovation adoption in order to stay innovative and competitive. A future research agenda and implications for practice are discussed.
... Hervás-Peralta et al. (2020) established a performance management evaluation system for dangerous goods container inland terminals and used analytic hierarchy processes to analyze the weighting for each indicator to help decision-makers improve the design of their inland terminals for dangerous goods containers. Hofstra et al. (2018) established a theoretical framework for warehouse security to allow for the evaluation and promotion of warehouse security to support warehouse storage logistics service providers to develop warehouse safety culture and improve the safety behavior of warehouse employees. Zhou, Fu and Xue (2020) reported fire protection requirements for hazardous chemical warehouse storage in relation to different storage modes for hazardous chemical substances, using fuzzy comprehensive assessment to construct a secondary evaluation index group for fire resource requirements. ...
... In general, the number of accidents and injuries that may occur in warehouses is relatively large when compared to other facilities [26]. Therefore, strict rules and regulations related to occupational safety and health are, more often than not, imposed and followed to ensure a safe work environment. ...
A novel way of integrating the genetic algorithm (GA) and the analytic network process (ANP) is presented in this paper in order to develop a new warehouse assessment scheme, which is developed through various stages. First, we define the main criteria that influence a warehouse performance. The proposed algorithm that integrates the GA with the ANP is then utilized to determine the relative importance values of the defined criteria and sub-criteria by considering the interrelationships among them, and assign strength values for such interrelationships. Such an algorithm is also employed to linguistically present the relative importance and the strength of the interrelationships in a way that can circumvent the use of pairwise comparisons. Finally, the audit checklist that consists of questions related to the criteria is integrated with the proposed algorithm for the development of the warehouse assessment scheme. Validated on 45 warehouses, the proposed scheme has been shown to be able to identify the warehouse competitive advantages and the areas where more improvements can be achieved.
... Heinrich further elaborates that there are four reasons why people commit unsafe acts, i.e., improper attitude, lack of knowledge or skill, physical incompatibility, and improper mechanical or physical environment (Disaster Management Institute, Bhopal, 2020). This suggests how important, regular training should be conducted (Ljubić, Raković, Dimitrov, & Garvanov, I. (2016)., awareness programme to be organised continuously (AuYong, Zailani, & Surienty, 2012) and also more safety precautions (Hofstra, Petkova, Dullaert, & Reniers (2018) to be implemented. It will benefit the warehouse and instill trust among trading partners to utilise the company's chemical warehouse due to the stringent and highest standard operating procedures that were put in place. ...
This article investigated the comprehensive risk management model practised at SWIFT Integrated Logistics chemical storage operations. The objective is to systematically illustrate the risk factors by identifying risks and mitigating them from the flow of the operation. By reducing or containing the risk factors, we are able to provide a conducive, safe, secure working environment with initiatives toward zero-incident reporting cases. A qualitative research method was applied in this study. Respondents selected for this study were at the managerial level at SWIFT Integrated Logistics with experience working in warehouse operations for more than five years. SWIFT Integrated Logistics management wanted to diversify its warehouse customer's portfolio and accepted new business opportunities in chemicals warehouse storage. The move contributed greatly to the business strategy and finance, but they faced serious risk management issues, which resulted in six (6) incidents and raised the level of anxiety and concern among the warehouse team on health & safety issues. Future studies may look into additional strategies to implement a better warehouse risk management model or plan for a chemical warehouse. This study suggested that regular or continuous training should be provided to the staff. Basic first aid kit training is an example of the mandatory training that should be part of the job standard operating procedure. This paper contributes to the limited existing study on chemical warehouse operations. Experience and measures taken by SWIFT management may provide some ideas to improve the management of chemical warehouse for other warehouse operators. Although chemical warehouse operation safety is important, there is scarce academic research that explores this issue.
... Safety constraints. Despite the large number of accidents that happen in warehouses Hofstra et al., 2018), safety constraints are not considered sufficiently when optimizing order picking operations. Safety rules, such as prohibiting truck backing to avoid that retrieved products fall on the picker, ensure the safety of individual order pickers (Chabot et al., 2018). ...
Market trends such as globalisation, increasing customer expectations, expensive industrial land and high labour costs cause a need for efficient order picking systems in practice. However, managers often do not implement findings from academic research on order picking planning into practice because researchers hardly account for practical factors (e.g., high-level storage, human factors, pick vehicle properties) or make unrealistic assumptions in their solution algorithms. A state-of-the-art review of the scientific literature on order picking planning (1) identifies and classifies highly influential practical factors, (2) shows the impact of these practical factors on order picking performance, and (3) illustrates how existing order picking planning models should be elaborated to account for practical factors. This study contributes to close the gap between research and practice by guiding future researchers to further increase the practical applicability of their research results.
... In the field of Fire Safety Engineering, a proper fire risk assessment requires specific chemical-physical parameters about the material that could potentially ignite and information about how and under which condition the same material is stored and treated. In this sense, warehouses represent an interesting context for fire safety issues [8,14]. Over a wide set of combustible materials, the Calorific Values, Total Heat Released (THR) and the Rate of Heat Released (RHR) have been experimentally evaluated through tests according to international standards. ...
In the field of Fire Safety Engineering, the application of mathematical models is crucial in order to properly estimate the severity of eventual fires occurring inside workplaces. Such models (like CFast, Ozone, FDS, CFX, Fluent), require a notable amount of specific parameters in order to work. Such parameters are usually available in the current literature, or they can be estimated via experimental tests. In this work, several experimental setups have been performed in order to evaluate such data in the burning of a wide range of materials: cotton, polyethylene and polyester in industrial rollers, flour, sugar, feed for dairy cows, and wood pallets. Cone Calorimeter, Mahler bomb, and real-scale tests have been performed in order to evaluate parameters such as Calorific Values, Total Heat Released, Heat Released Rate and smoke composition analysis. The real-scale tests have been performed with the aim of addressing fire occurring in warehouses, focusing then on an industrial environment. All the values have been compared with theoretical estimations made with the ClaRaf 2.0 software, and it was noticed that they tend to give overestimated values in comparison with empirical results.
... Despite the large number of accidents that happen in warehouses Hofstra et al., 2018), safety constraints are not considered sufficiently when optimizing order picking operations. Safety rules, such as prohibiting truck backing to avoid that retrieved products fall on the picker, ensure the safety of individual order pickers (Chabot et al., 2018). ...
Complex market conditions and new developments make a warehouse manager's job hard. E-commerce and globalisation intensify competition among warehouses. The high expectations of customers to provide unique products and quick deliveries force warehouses to increase storage capacity, while at the same time reducing pick times. Additionally, expensive industrial land and high labour costs put pressure on the warehouse costs. To cope with these challenges, a wide range of order picking planning problems need to be optimised. Previous academic research focusses mainly on individual planning problems, without accounting for existing real-life features. Optimizing order picking planning problems sequentially may yield a suboptimal overall warehouse performance. Furthermore, excluding real-life features when developing algorithms and decision support tools prevents managers from using the academic findings in practice. Therefore, the objective of this thesis is to design efficient manual order picking systems by combining order picking planning problems and accounting for real-life features (e.g., safety constraints, due time constraints, workload peaks). The main contributions of this PhD research are as follows. First, a classification of existing literature on tactical and operational order picking planning problems identifies interesting and relevant research directions to narrow the gap between academic research and practice. Second, an interaction analysis explains how and why the four main order picking planning problems (i.e., picker zoning, storage assignment, order batching and routing) are related. It also provides insights into the relevance and importance of incorporating real-life features (i.e., picker blocking, safety constraints and high-level storage) while planning order picking operations. Third, the value of incorporating workload related features is demonstrated by presenting a proof of concept of time series forecasting models in a warehouse context and by introducing a new mathematical programming model that balances the workload of order pickers over a short term planning horizon. Fourth, the benefits of optimising the integrated order batching, routing and job assignment problem are demonstrated, while coping with resource and due time constraints as well as high-level storage locations. Finally, the research provides future research opportunities that will be highly relevant to practice and which are largely unexplored in literature, thereby further reducing the research-practice gap. Results show that the total order pick time can be substantially reduced by combining order picking planning problems. Combining existing order picking policies may yield performance benefits of 60-75% compared to the current operation in practice. Moreover, this PhD research illustrates the relevance and importance of incorporating real-life features in academic modelling approaches. Results show that safety constraints induce wait times, and cause additional travelling, picker blocking turns out to be minimised at the expense of additional setup time, and slow vertical travel results in additional travel and wait times. Consequently, ignoring these real-life features causes substantial performance inefficiencies. Robust policies for organizing operations efficiently are provided for a wide range of practical order picking systems, thereby including the effect of real-life features. Finally, time series forecasting techniques and the operational workload balancing model supports managers to define the daily resource capacity and how to allocate these resources. On average, these decision support tools are able to strongly reduce the daily over- or underestimated resources compared to the individual gut feeling and experience of supervisors. These insights and results can be used to integrate operational order picking planning problems, which may result in additionally reduced pick times of 15-20% in the real-life warehouse. The provided managerial insights and decision support tools increase the control and efficiency of order picking operations and reduces the research-practice gap.
Environmental control is necessary to guarantee the quality of the products throughout the supply chain, i.e., from the producer to the consumer. The improper conservation and handling of goods result in deterioration and economic losses. For example, temperature-controlled environments are necessary for the storage of perishable goods, such as pharmaceutics, fruits, vegetables, dairy, and meat products, while the cold chain prevents the deterioration of these products by maintaining a controlled atmosphere, with a static temperature below − 18 °C or between 0 and 15 °C according to the product. In addition, low oxygen levels and high carbon dioxide levels are maintained in cold warehouses to extend the shelf-life of perishable products. On the contrary, storage warehouses without air conditioning systems are characterized by the achievement of high temperatures during the summer period, presenting significant vertical temperature differences. Despite the progressive automation of logistics processes, some activities, such as maintenance actions and material handling operations, require operator access to these hot and cold environments. Exposure to extreme heat or cold can result in adverse health effects, such as illnesses, injuries, and death. Severe hot and cold environments prevent the achievement of comfort conditions and aggravate muscle strain in the manual handling of loads. Also, low oxygen levels in a controlled atmosphere prevent breathability. This chapter analyses the environmental risk factors associated with warehouses and the effects on operators’ safety and well-being. The aim is to investigate technical solutions and valuation models to safeguard the operators during material handling or maintenance activities in severe hot, cold, or controlled atmosphere environments.
W każdym magazynie są realizowane procesy, które mają charakter statyczny i dynamiczny. Przebiegają one w zmiennym środowisku, mającym charakter planowy i przypadkowy, spowodowany różnymi zagrożeniami. Pomocnym narzędziem pozwalającym skutecznie realizować gospodarkę magazynową w sposób bezpieczny jest analiza tego wszystkiego co związane jest z realizowanymi procesami w sytuacjach kryzysowych. Prowadzone wcześniejsze analizy w warunkach Polski zasugerowały, że obszar ten wymaga dalszych badań, które zostały przedstawione w czterech podrozdziałach: trzy teoretyczne i jeden praktyczny. Celem pracy była identyfikacja i ocena narzędzi oraz praktyk pozytywnie wpływających na bezpieczeństwo w magazynach w Polsce, w latach 2019 -2022. W publikacji postawiono: − problem badawczy w postaci pytania: w jakim stopniu funkcjonujące systemy techniczne i pozatechniczne wpływają na gospodarkę magazynową w sytuacjach zagrożeń? − dwie luki badawcze, pierwsza przejawia się brakiem opracowań dotyczących identyfikacji zagrożeń mających wpływ na bezpieczeństwo magazynu, a druga praktyczna, związana z niedoborem takich badań; − hipotezę – identyfikacja zagrożeń i czynników technicznych wpływa na bezpieczeństwo magazynu. Badania zostały przeprowadzone za pomocą ankiety, w której analizowano zagrożenia oraz czynniki wpływające na bezpieczeństwo w magazynach. Zaprezentowane wyniki pozwoliły skonkretyzować zagrożenia, które mogą się pojawić w gospodarce magazynowej, dokonać oceny oraz zaproponować rozwiązania techniczne wpływające na bezpieczeństwo magazynów.
Market trends such as globalisation, increasing customer expectations, expensive industrial land and high labour costs cause a need for efficient order picking systems in practice. However, managers often do not implement findings from academic research on order picking planning into practice because researchers hardly account for practical factors (e.g. high-level storage, human factors, pick vehicle properties) or make unrealistic assumptions in their solution algorithms. A state-of-the-art review of the scientific literature on order picking planning (1) identifies and classifies highly influential practical factors, (2) shows the impact of these practical factors on order picking performance, and (3) illustrates how existing order picking planning models should be elaborated to account for practical factors. This study contributes to close the gap between research and practice by guiding future researchers to further increase the practical applicability of their research results.
Background
Errors and preventable harm to patients remain regrettably common and expensive in healthcare. Improvement requires transforming the culture of the healthcare industry to put a greater emphasis on safety. Safety culture involves holding collective attitudes, values, and behaviors that prioritize safety. The Safer Culture framework, previously established through a narrative review of literature in multiple industries, provides a consensus on what impacts safety culture, how it manifests in behavior, and how it influences safety-related outcomes.
Methods
Through a theoretical review, we validate, refine, and provide nuance to this framework for the development of safety culture in healthcare contexts. To accomplish this, we conceptually map existing dimensions pulled through the literature onto our Safer Culture framework.
Results
A total of 360 articles were reviewed. We present specific elements for each dimension in our framework and apply the dimension to healthcare contexts.
Conclusion
We provide an evidence-based and comprehensive framework that can be used by patient safety leaders and researchers to guide the evaluation of safety culture and develop interventions to foster patient safety culture and improve patient safety outcomes.
In recent years, the logistics outsourcing market has significantly expanded, driving also the growth of the logistics real estate sector. However, these subjects have been investigated separately, without empirical evidence on the assessment of warehouse features, nor studies matching those with 3PL providers’ needs. This paper aims to fill this gap by providing a deeper understanding of the alignment between the 3PL industry’s needs and the logistics real estate offering. An extensive literature review was used to investigate the characteristics of the logistics real estate industry and define the present and future challenges for the 3PL industry. Afterwards, 3PL warehouse features were analysed through data collected on 75 logistics buildings located in Italy. Results indicate that the logistics real estate seems relatively prepared to support the 3PL industry’s needs. However, such alignment could be further strengthened through investments by the logistics real estate towards environmental sustainability and warehouse automation.
The article is intended for those who are not safety professionals but are responsible for safety management in a small or medium enterprise (SME) of the process industry. It assumes that a SME is loosely coupled and of low complexity and has a small number of major hazards present in it. The article describes Elementary Safety Management (ESM) as a combination of activities that maintain openness to safety impulses with Elementary Risk Control (ERC). ERC uses four milestones and three rules to get to the necessary and sufficient selection of control measures, which will achieve an acceptable level of risk. To make the ESM scheme as simple as possible, the term causal event is used, which is derived from the term causal factor. Practical Safety Management (PrSM) adds to the ESM the knowledge and skills that a person, who is supposed to design and implement a safety management system, needs. The PrSM procedure is developed to identify optimum controls. The procedure recognizes the unavoidable role of commitment to safety, respects the role of hazard identification, and integrates prospective and retrospective analyses and current knowledge of safety management systems. Examples of application of the procedure are given in the article.
In the face of increasing competition in today’s manufacturing world, it is the need of the hour to associate cloud manufacturing with supply chain network making it smarter. It is a paradigm that helps taking smart decisions such as warehouse selection in manufacturing organisations efficaciously. In the proposed holistic approach, we combine Dempster–Shafer theory and analysis of variance in supply chain and integrate the same with cloud manufacturing for extrapolation. It is examined in a case study of warehouse selection for a manufacturing organisation. The study reveals the effectiveness of the model in selecting appropriate warehouse location for a manufacturing organisation. Lastly, the model is compared with the accomplished ideas of technique for ordered preference by similarity to ideal solution on the same case study. The outcome of the comparison results establishes the validation and robustness of the proposed approach.
Purpose: One of the major challenges for modern organizations is to create healthy and safe work environments, as evidenced by the number of occupational deaths (worldwide: four per minute), and an even higher number of injuries. This study explores different levels of motivation and ability, to identify which are most relevant for safety climate and safety performance. This study aims to pinpoint the areas information designers should focus on to most effectively contribute to healthy and safe work environments.Method: We designed a questionnaire for employees of a Dutch high-tech and high- risk warehouse, a workplace where safety regulations are important. The employees scored their attitudes regarding motivation, ability, safety climate, and safety performance.Results: The results confirmed the expected relationship between safety climate and safety performance. Of the explored sublevels of motivation and ability, personal motivation and external ability proved most relevant for creating a healthy safety climate and healthy safety performance.Conclusion: In the design of safety instructions, focusing on personal motivation and external ability seems a promising strategy for contributing to healthy and safe work environments, especially in high-risk environments.
One of the most fundamental indicators of a facility's social sustainability is the health and safety of its workers. Yet the literature provides little guidance for engineering managers, workers or researchers trying to understand how practices designed to enhance productivity will impact the safety of operational workers. The present research addresses that gap by simultaneously examining operational “best” practices such as quality management and just-in-time and performance outcomes such as productivity and worker safety. To control for the myriad of potential problems with self-reports of worker safety performance, we match secondary data provided by the state of Oregon with managers’ self-reported responses to operational practices. The results show that the relationship between operational practices and safety outcomes is nuanced with just-in-time harming worker safety, an impact that can be mitigated by the adoption of team-based work up to a point, as the relationship between JIT and team-based work is U-shaped.
The nature of construction projects and their delivery exposes participants to accidents and dangers. Safety climate serves as a frame of reference for employees to make sense of safety measures in the workplace and adapt their behaviors. Though safety climate research abounds, fewer efforts are made to investigate the formation of a safety climate. An effort to explore forming psychological safety climate, an operationalization of safety climate at the individual level, is an appropriate starting point. Taking the view that projects are social processes, this paper develops a conceptual framework of forming the psychological safety climate, and provides a preliminary validation. The model suggests that management can create the desired psychological safety climate by efforts from structural, perceptual, interactive, and cultural perspectives. Future empirical research can be built on the model to provide a more comprehensive and coherent picture of the determinants of safety climate.
A growing number of studies have been conducted to define and assess safety culture in a variety of complex, high-risk, industries. The purpose of the present study was to review these efforts in order to gain a better understanding of the "safety culture" concept, along with the highly related concept of "safety climate." Results suggest that there exists considerable disagreement among researchers as to how safety culture should be defined and whether or not safety culture is inherently different from the concept of safety climate. These differences, however, are not generally due to the uniqueness of the industry or work domain being studied, since many researchers have focused on common domains (e.g., nuclear power). A synthesis of these various perspectives was conducted and hybrid definitions of both safety culture and climate are provided. Perhaps a common nomenclature and set of definitions will enable researchers to better share information and strategies for improving safety culture.
The paper seeks to explain the seeming paradox whereby workers' safety behaviour during routine work depends largely on supervisory contingencies (i.e. pressures and rewards), rather than on self-preservation. We identify three behavioural tendencies accountable for underweighting of outcomes associated with safe behaviour, i.e. delayed outcomes (i.e. melioration bias), rare or uncertain outcomes (i.e. recency bias), and outcomes concerning social externalities. Jointly, they result in a tendency to favour unsafe behaviour in many routine work situations. Examination of effective and ineffective intervention programmes suggests that the key to success lies in providing frequent, personally meaningful, and immediate rewards for safe conduct, overriding the costs associated with that behaviour and exceeding the benefits of unsafe behaviour.
The present research examines the effects of a complex safety program that combined Behavior-Based Safety (BBS) and traditional safety methods. The study was conducted in an automobile parts plant in Mexico. Two sister plants served as comparison. Some of the components of the safety programs addressed behaviors of managers and included methods for tracking and ensuring that all components of the safety intervention were systematically carried out. Seven years of safety data indicate that the program was very effective in reducing injuries to workers with reductions of 92% for the index of first-time occupational visits, 99% reduction in los-t-time case rate, and 96% reduction in severity rate. Arguments are made that BBS programs should expand to include behaviors that are distal to the behaviors of line workers and thus improve its acceptance and effectiveness.
The purpose of this paper is to call attention to the increased importance of workplace safety in the field of operations management, and to suggest ways in which this topic can be woven into research agendas. A key tenet is the proposition that the competitive priority construct (quality, cost, delivery and flexibility) may need to be expanded to include social responsibility ‐ with workplace safety as one dimension of this new priority. The cost of workplace injuries in the U.S. is increasing at an alarming rate, and accident occurrences have grown steadily over the last several years. The manufacturing sector is especially vulnerable to safety problems and, thus, is the central focus of this paper. A number of new factors are increasing the importance of related issues for operations managers. Three of these factors ‐ the quality movement, changes in technology and changes in operations practices ‐ are embedded within the operations function. Two others ‐ workforce diversity and organized labor interests ‐ are associated with the human resource function but have links with operations. Political, legal and public forces stem from outside the boundaries of the organization, but still have important influences on operations management. Regardless of the origins of these phenomena, all have direct effects on the management of operations and all have significant implications for research in this field.
Despite many calls for case‐based operations management research, the successful publication rate of such articles in top‐tier journals has been less than stellar. A five step case‐based research and dissemination process is presented. Guidance is given to future researchers for each step in the process. In addition, areas of weakness are examined and discussed in detail. Future potential research questions in operations management considered to be appropriate for the case‐based method are highlighted.
Case and field research studies continue to be rarely published in operations management journals, in spite of increased interest in reporting such types of studies and results. This paper documents the advantages and rigor of case/field research and argues that these methods are preferred to the more traditional rationalist methods of optimization, simulation, and statistical modeling for building new operations management theories. In the process of describing the constructs of inference and generalizability with reference to case research, we find the existing definitions inadequate and thus extend and refine them to better discriminate between alternate research methodologies. We also elaborate on methods for increasing the generalizability of both rationalist and case/field research studies. A major conclusion is that these alternate research methods are not mutually exclusive and, if combined, can offer greater potential for enhancing new theories than either method alone.
In this paper, safety-related terms, factors and dimensions, such as safety climate, safety attitude, safety behaviour , safety technology, safety procedures, safety training, safety perception and others, are investigated from the perspective of safety culture. Based on an extensive review of literature regarding existing studies and models with respect to safety, an overall conceptual 'big picture' model of safety culture is developed and suggested. This model, called The Egg Aggregated Model, and abbreviated TEAM, provides a clear overview of how safety culture can be viewed in an organisation and how the different safety factors and dimensions constituting the safety culture are related in a cyclic way.
- This paper describes the process of inducting theory using case studies from specifying the research questions to reaching closure. Some features of the process, such as problem definition and construct validation, are similar to hypothesis-testing research. Others, such as within-case analysis and replication logic, are unique to the inductive, case-oriented process. Overall, the process described here is highly iterative and tightly linked to data. This research approach is especially appropriate in new topic areas. The resultant theory is often novel, testable, and empirically valid. Finally, framebreaking insights, the tests of good theory (e.g., parsimony, logical coherence), and convincing grounding in the evidence are the key criteria for evaluating this type of research.
Using GPS data of 370 long-haul trips in India, survey data of 49 truck drivers, and ERP data, this study examines the role of driver personality characteristics in predicting risky and productive driving. The results show that more conscientious drivers display more risky driving behavior. More extravert drivers are less productive, whereas driver safety consciousness positively relates to productivity. These results can serve as a starting point for further studies into how long-haul transport companies may use individual truck driver characteristics in their training and selection procedures to meet operational safety and productivity objectives.
This article reports on a study of non-traffic related work safety among drivers of heavy goods vehicles in Denmark. In the heavy goods vehicle transport (HGV) sector only 6.4% of workplace accidents involving drivers are traffic related. HGV work is characterised by solitary work, as drivers tend to work at a physical distance from their own company and their working environment is also influenced by the working environment of other companies e.g. the places where they deliver goods. This study focuses on an analysis of HGV drivers’ and managers’ differentiated understandings of risk and safety and its management within an organisational context. The situational focus involves viewing HGV drivers’ working environment as a part of the organisational structure as well as of other social relationships. An understanding of safety culture as practice is applied with the view of identifying values and attitudes as well as organisational and technical aspects in relation to how individualist or collectivist understandings of risk and safety influence the working environment in HGVs.
Three studies were conducted to develop and evaluate safety toolbox talks about fatal construction incidents. Study 1 surveyed workers (n = 28) about existing pre-shift meetings. An evidence-based structure for toolbox talks was developed, and study 2 evaluated our selected line drawing illustration format with workers (n = 30). Study 3 evaluated supervisors’ talks using: (1) new toolbox guides and (2) long-form investigation reports with workers from eight construction crews.
In study 1, 25% of the sample reported never conducted safety meetings. In study 2, compared to photos, line drawings increased the distance workers’ could correctly identify hazards by over 1.5 m. In study 3, the new format was preferred by 82% of supervisors, saved them 15 min preparation/presentation time, and produced favorable impacts with workers.
Brief scripted toolbox talks made it easier for supervisors to share fatal stories and prevention recommendations with their crews. When the format includes scripted text for the supervisors, prompts for discussion and action items, and line drawings worker understanding can be enhanced.
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to determine whether or not early, mid, late-career stage truck drivers view the safety regulations differently and how drivers’ regulatory attitudes influence their compliance attitudes and intentions.
Design/methodology/approach – This survey study is designed to evaluate the differences in truck drivers’ attitudes toward safety regulations across career stages. Moreover, the study applies ordinary least squares path analysis to determine the influence of drivers’ regulatory attitudes on compliance attitudes and intentions.
Findings – Results revealed that drivers’ in early and late career stages harbor different perceptions of the burden safety regulations place on driving operations, the effectiveness of driver-focused safety regulations in maintaining road safety, and the acceptability of certain unsafe acts. Moreover, drivers’ attitudes toward regulations directly and indirectly influenced compliance attitudes and intentions.
Research limitations/implications – The participant sample was taken from employees of four large motor carriers operating refrigerated and dry box trailers over the road in interstate commerce. While the sample is roughly representative of this segment, the authors recommend caution in generalizing the findings across the diverse U.S. trucking industry as a whole.
Practical implications – Findings suggest that motor carrier management should tailor safety and regulatory familiarization training across career stages. Moreover, carriers should provide targeted communication regarding the effectiveness of regulations and impact of regulations on driving operations in order to alleviate drivers’ negative attitudes toward regulations where possible.
Originality/value – This study marks the first application of career stage theory to the motor carrier safety context. This study also provides further evidence as to the efficacy of drivers’ attitudes toward safety regulations in predicting drivers’ compliance attitudes and intentions. A better understanding of these phenomena may lead to improved compliance and safety.
Keywords - Motor carrier safety, Transportation safety, Truck driver attitudes, Commercial motor vehicle driver safety, Compliance, Career stage, USA
Paper type - Research paper
Construction site water pollution causes irreversible damages to the surrounding environment with additional cost, time and resources required for rectification works. Construction teams are often blamed for causing site water pollution. Little thought has been given to recognize the underlying reasons for the undesirable actions, particularly the distal factors. In construction, safety and accident research has provided a strong theoretical background that focused on distal factors. Therefore, this study aims to use the basis of accident causation model to identify the distal and proximal factors for site water pollution that will be represented using the Causal Loop Diagram. The use of Causal Loop Diagram establishes a new scientific approach towards portraying the dynamic interaction between the distal and proximal factors for site water pollution, further narrowing down the factors to be enhanced or controlled. This study has employed three different methods (in-depth interview, systematic review and case study) to identify the potential distal and proximal factors. Findings from the study suggest that the root cause for site water pollution lies on the distal factor that stems from funding. From a dynamic perspective, positive improvements made on funding could reduce the negative effects on the ensuing factors. In summary, distal factors have a domino effect on the proximal factors where the dynamic interaction between them could ultimately increase the risk of site water pollution. The outcome of this study would be a transparent and holistic perspective on the underlying causes of site water pollution that embraces the concept of pollution prevention.
This practical text serves as a guide to elaborating and determining the principles, assumptions, strengths, limitations and areas of application for multiple-plant chemical safety and security management. It offers guidelines, procedures, frameworks and technology for actually setting up a safety and security culture in a cluster of chemical companies, thus allowing forward planning. The presentation is conceptually rather than mathematically oriented so as to maximize its utilization within the chemical industry.
This paper examines the effect on aviation safety of cultural differences between Chinese and Western commercial airline pilots. James Reason and Alan Hobbs’ Safety Culture model of a Just Culture, a Reporting Culture, and a Learning Culture was applied to the vertical aspect to measure Safety Culture in a multi-dimensional mode; a comparison of Chinese culture and Western culture on aviation safety was applied to the horizontal aspect to investigate the two different cultures. Qualitative and quantitative methods were used for this research. The interviews yielded five topics: trust, guanxi (relationship) vs. equity and equality, power distances, harmony among people, and sharing information and knowledge. For each of the five topics, questionnaires were developed to investigate the effects of cultural differences on international commercial airline pilots. A major finding was that the cultural differences strongly influence the pilots’ trust and satisfaction with the implementation of a Just Culture, a Reporting Culture, and a Learning Culture in their company. The Western pilots were more satisfied with those aspects of the Safety Culture model than were the Chinese pilots. Leadership that builds trust, includes a high power distance, and allows them to maintain harmony with their colleagues in a Reporting Culture is desired by Chinese pilots. Because it might have generated negative responses from their colleagues, Chinese pilots were more hesitant than were Western pilots to share information and knowledge. Finally, managers’ work histories, communication skills, good examples, team reporting, and incentive programs were suggested as vital for assuring the success of the Safety Culture.
In Italy small and medium enterprises (SMEs) account for 99.9% of businesses and are constituted more than elsewhere by micro-enterprises. In 2008 an injury prevention project designed for metalworking micro-enterprises was initiated near Turin (Italy). Aims: The aim of this paper is to describe the project and assess its effectiveness in improving the safety of machinery and quality of workplace environments. Methods: The multi-component intervention included: baseline assessment visits by technicians without juridical power; free training sessions for company owners; post-intervention inspection of a sample of companies. Indices relating to the machinery and the environment were calculated and pre- post intervention differences were measured. Comparisons between specific groups of participant firms were made. Results: 86.5% of the selected firms took part in at least some components of the intervention. There was a significant overall average improvement of more than 20% in the environment index, while for the machinery there were not statistically significant results. The group of firms which attended the sessions had greater improvements than the group which did not. The proportion of machinery complying with legislation increased, but only for some specific types of machines. Conclusions: This is a good example of an intervention focusing on a target group of firms that are not usually involved in prevention projects. It is concluded that an intervention, based on visits to the companies and free information meetings, was effective in improving workplace environment safety in metalworking micro-enterprises.
Considerable attention has been paid to safety culture since the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power station accident. Researchers have studied it and companies and regulators have applied it to enhance safety. However, few research studies have been conducted that establish a link between safety culture and operational or process safety and methods used to assess safety culture, primarily questionnaires, have been criticized on methodological grounds. One way to enhance system safety is through applying the lessons of investigations of accidents of process safety to remediate organizational shortcomings identified in the investigation. Rather than attempting to assess safety culture directly, examining company actions and decisions directly after an accident can allow investigators to make inferences about safety culture at the time of the accident. This study suggests a method to directly examine the role of organizations in accidents by identifying the nature of organizational errors and describing the logic that can link these errors to accident causation. The application of this method in several accident investigations is described.
This exploratory research employs a series of cases studies and a multi-stakeholder perspective to examine safety practices and outcomes in the wider context of business operations. The aims of the research include enhancing the understanding of the practices critical for safe workplaces and of the business value (positive or negative) of safety. Four research questions related to safety practices and outcomes and operational practices and outcomes were addressed. The results provide new and novel insights into safety's role in the organization and show that when safety is examined in the wider organizational context additional rationale for improving safety becomes visible.
Many small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are obliged to adopt a Safety Managements System (SMS) by the Directive 2012/18/EU for the control of Major Accident Hazards (Seveso III). The difficulties of implementing an SMS within a small sized work organization are well known by practitioners, including inspectors and auditors and have been discussed in many recent papers. In the present paper is discussed a new method, based on the bowtie model, to build an easy and effective SMS. The very core of this method is a “safety net model”, which is able to connect in a network all the tangible and intangible elements of safety, including equipment, operating instructions, procedures and safety documents. This safety model has been used as the core of a smart application, the strength of which is the workers’ contribution. The application allows the users to build step by step an SMS. It starts from a first version based just on regulations and standard codes (version 0), then it integrates internal knowledge through the bowtie paradigm (version 1). Near misses’ discussion is used to transfer actual workers’ experience into the system, to get intermediate improvement of the SMS (version 1.x). At the end audit may be used to a major release of the SMS (version 2). The full cycle has been tested at two small Seveso establishments: a galvanic plant and small glue manufacturer.
Despite significant research, there is still little agreement over how to define safety culture or of what it is comprised. Due to this lack of agreement, much of the safety culture research has little more than safety management strategies in common. There is, however, a degree of acceptance of the close relationship between safety culture and organisational culture. Organisational culture can be described using traditional views of culture drawn from the anthropology and cultural psychology literature. However, the safety culture literature rarely ventures beyond organisational culture into discussions of these more traditional concepts of culture. There is a need to discuss how these concepts of culture can be applied to safety culture to provide greater understanding of safety culture and additional means by which to approach safety in the workplace. This review explores how three traditional conceptualisations of culture; the normative, anthropological and pragmatist conceptualisations, can and have been be applied to safety culture. Finally the review proposes a synthesised conceptualisation of safety culture which can be used to provide greater depth and practical applicability of safety culture, by increasing our understanding of the interactions between cultural and contextual variables in a given workplace and the effect they have on safety.
Service providers encounter problems in trying to meet safety requirements set by legislation and multiple customers. This article introduces an operational model for service providers to promote and ease the management of safety. The model guides providers organising safety management within their own company and at customers' worksites, and encourages utilising good safety performance as an asset. The operational model is constructed by paying attention to the relevant legislation, encountered safety management problems, contributory factors of accidents, and the needs of organisations operating in manufacturing. According to the user reviews, the model's novel way of combining theoretical information, legal requirements, practical examples and tools, and a particular service provider viewpoint is a beneficial approach to the introduction of safety management.
Today, manufacturing firms encounter pressure from multiple stakeholders to manage occupational health and safety issues properly, systematically and transparently. While manufacturing firms commonly use internally developed Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems, there is growing pressure to adopt externally certified system such as OHSAS 18001. However, there are conflicting views and little empirical evidence that examines the linkage between OHSAS 18001 certification and operating performance. Hence, this paper examines the impact of OHSAS 18001 on operational performance through three theoretical lenses: Institutional Theory, Normal Accident Theory, and High Reliability Theory. We also investigate how complexity and coupling moderate the relationship between OHSAS 18001 and operational performance. Based on a sample of 211 U.S. listed manufacturing firms with OHSAS 18001 certification, we find that certification leads to significant increases in abnormal performance on safety, sales growth, labor productivity, and profitability and that these benefits increase as complexity and coupling increase.
Injuries resulting from manual handling tasks represent an on-going problem for the transport and storage industry. This article describes an application of a systems theory-based approach, Rasmussen's (1997. Safety Science 27, 183), risk management framework, to the analysis of the factors influencing safety during manual handling activities in a freight handling organisation. Observations of manual handling activities, cognitive decision method interviews with workers (n=27) and interviews with managers (n=35) were used to gather information about three manual handling activities. Hierarchical task analysis and thematic analysis were used to identify potential risk factors and performance shaping factors across the levels of Rasmussen's framework. These different data sources were then integrated using Rasmussen's Accimap technique to provide an overall analysis of the factors influencing safety during manual handling activities in this context. The findings demonstrate how a systems theory-based approach can be applied to this domain, and suggest that policy-orientated, rather than worker-orientated, changes are required to prevent future manual handling injuries.
The concept of safety culture is relatively new in the construction industry; however, it is gaining popularity due to its ability to embrace all perceptional, psychological, behavioral and managerial factors. To address the lack of a verifiable process to assess construction safety culture, this paper presents a conceptual model that has its roots firmly entrenched in pertinent academic and applied literature. The paper provides a critical review of the term ‘safety culture’; along with distinct yet related concepts (i.e. safety climate, safety system and behavior-based safety). It also compares the proposed model with available safety culture models in order to demonstrate its applicability in construction site environments.
The concept of culture is now widely used by those who conduct research on safety and work-related injury outcomes. We argue that as the term has been applied by an increasingly diverse set of disciplines, its scope has broadened beyond how it was defined and intended for use by sociologists and anthropologists. As a result, this more inclusive concept has lost some of its precision and analytic power. We suggest that the utility of this "new" understanding of culture could be improved if researchers more clearly delineated the ideological - the socially constructed abstract systems of meaning, norms, beliefs and values (which we refer to as culture) - from concrete behaviors, social relations and other properties of workplaces (e.g., organizational structures) and of society itself. This may help researchers investigate how culture and social structures can affect safety and injury outcomes with increased analytic rigor. In addition, maintaining an analytical distinction between culture and other social factors can help intervention efforts better understand the target of the intervention and therefore may improve chances of both scientific and instrumental success.
This research examines how organizations simultaneously manage their operations and occupational health and safety. Although both safety and operations scholars conduct research in the same operational settings, they have reached different, yet untested, conclusions about the relationship between creating a safe workplace and creating a productive workplace. The results from a series of 10 case studies show that it is possible to create safe and productive workplaces, but that many facilities fail at this task because of problems associated with the culture management creates and the practices management adopts.
Scandinavian countries such as Sweden implemented the occupational health and safety (OHS) measures in the European Directive 89/391/EEC earlier than other European counties, including Spain. In fact, statistics on workplace accident rates reveal that between 2004 and 2009, there were considerably fewer accidents in Sweden than in Spain.
The objective of the research described in this paper was to reduce workplace accidents and to improve OHS management in Spain by exploring the OHS practices in Sweden. For this purpose, an exploratory comparative study was conducted, which focused on the effectiveness of the EU directive in both countries. The study included a cross-sectional analysis of workplace accident rates and other contextual indicators in both national contexts. A case study of 14 Swedish and Spanish companies identified 14 differences in the preventive practices implemented. These differences were then assessed with a Delphi study to evaluate their contribution to the reduction of workplace accidents and their potential for improving health and safety management in Spain.
The results showed that there was agreement concerning 12 of the 14 practices. Finally, we discuss opportunities of improvement in Spanish companies so that they can make their risk management practices more effective.
The findings of this comparative study on the implementation of the European Directive 89/391/EEC in both Sweden and Spain have revealed health and safety managerial practices which, if properly implemented, could contribute to improved work conditions and accident statistics of Spanish companies. In particular, the results suggest that Spanish employers, safety managers, external prevention services, safety deputies and Labour Inspectorates should consider implementing streamlined internal preventive management, promoting the integration of prevention responsibilities to the chain of command, and preventing health and safety management from becoming a mere exchange of documents. The authors also encourage future research studies to use the methodology presented to compare and assess the European Directive 89/391/EEC implementation in other European countries.
The purpose of this paper is to call attention to the increased importance of workplace safety in the field of operations management, and to suggest ways in which this topic can be woven into research agendas. A key tenet is the proposition that the competitive priority construct (quality, cost, delivery and flexibility) may need to be expanded to include social responsibility - with workplace safety as one dimension of this new priority. The cost of workplace injuries in the U.S. is increasing at an alarming rate, and accident occurrences have grown steadily over the last several years. The manufacturing sector is especially vulnerable to safety problems and, thus, is the central focus of this paper. A number of new factors are increasing the importance of related issues for operations managers. Three of these factors - the quality movement, changes in technology and changes in operations practices - are embedded within the operations function. Two others - workforce diversity and organized labor interests - are associated with the human resource function but have links with operations. Political, legal and public forces stem from outside the boundaries of the organization, but still have important influences on operations management. Regardless of the origins of these phenomena, all have direct effects on the management of operations and all have significant implications for research in this field.
The present research investigates antecedents of safety performance in warehouses. Specifically, we study what factors influence the number of accidents that have occurred in the past three and a half years in 78 Dutch warehouses. Based on prior research in (behavioral) operations management, safety management, and organizational behavior, we identify hazard reducing systems (HRS), safety-specific transformational leadership (SSTL), and safety consciousness (SC) as potential predictors of safety performance. Path analysis on data from a survey among 78 warehouse managers and 1033 warehouse employees shows, in line with prior research, that HRS is a strong predictor of safety performance. Importantly, our results also suggest that SSTL may be an even more important predictor of safety performance than HRS. SSTL affects safety performance directly (contrary to our expectations SC does not mediate this relationship) and strongly predicts safety performance even after controlling for the effects of HRS. SSTL also mediates some of the effects of HRS on safety performance. Subsequently, we propose that leaders are critical in fostering safety on the work floor.
This paper reviews the literature on safety culture and safety climate. The main emphasis is on applied research customary in the social psychological or organisational psychological traditions. Although safety culture and climate are generally acknowledged to be important concepts, not much consensus has been reached on the cause, the content and the consequences of safety culture and climate in the past 20 years. Moreover, there is an overall lack of models specifying either the relationship of both concepts with safety and risk management or with safety performance. In this paper, safety culture and climate will be differentiated according to a general framework based on work by Schein (1992 Schein) on organisational culture. This framework distinguishes three levels at which organisational culture can be studied — basis assumptions, espoused values and artefacts. At the level of espoused values we find attitudes, which are equated with safety climate. The basic assumptions, however, form the core of the culture. It is argued that these basic assumptions do not have to be specifically about safety, although it is considered a good sign if they are. It is concluded that safety climate might be considered an alternative safety performance indicator and that research should focus on its scientific validity. More important, however, is the assessment of an organisation's basic assumptions, since these are assumed to be explanatory to its attitudes.
The role of employee safety in supply chain performance has inexplicably been overlooked by operations management literature. With a few notable exceptions, there is no guidance in the literature for operations managers trying to understand the role that employee safety at their own or a suppliers could play in quality outcomes. This manuscript takes a first step to rectify this oversight by using cognitive dissonance theory to build a series of propositions that link safety perceptions to quality outcomes. Empirical tests of these propositions provide initial evidence that safety does indeed contribute to quality outcomes in the supply chain.
This paper compares and contrasts two prominent and seemingly antagonistic safety management rubrics: the behavior change and culture change approaches to safety. The two perspectives are analyzed in terms of their conceptual and theoretical foundations, defining characteristics, and apparent strengths and weaknesses. The level of empirical support for each approach is also assessed. The argument is advanced that the two approaches are essentially complementary and that their respective strengths can be merged into a more balanced and comprehensive approach for managing workplace safety. This integrated approach has two key features: (1) a data-based and participatory problem-solving process that emulates some of the inherent strengths of behavior change technology, and (2) a more explicit culture change process that can be systematically monitored and assessed.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to develop a measurement scale to assess over‐the‐road commercial motor vehicle operators' attitudes toward safety regulations.
Design/methodology/approach
A literature review of the current USA motor carrier safety literature and general safety literature is conducted to determine the existence of a construct and measurement scale suitable for assessing truck drivers' attitudes toward regulations. As no existing construct is found, a new construct needs to be developed. A rigorous construct development process is conducted to establish the content domain, reliability, and validity of a new construct to measure truck drivers' regulatory attitudes.
Findings
The results of this paper shows a reliable and valid construct to measure truck drivers' perceptions of the general attitude, effectiveness, and enforcement of safety regulations.
Research limitations/implications
This effort is the initial construct development process and use of the construct in theory testing studies is necessary.
Practical implications
The regulatory attitude construct is developed in support of a larger investigation into the behavioral aspects of truck driver safety. The broader study seeks to inform theory and practice as to how the trucking industry's regulatory environment influences truck drivers' safety‐related decisions and behaviors. By identifying the impact of the regulatory environment, safety program managers should be able to direct their educational and training efforts to influence factors that will result in better decisions and safer driving behaviors.
Originality/value
This construct development process marks the first attempt to comprehensively measure truck drivers' attitudes toward safety regulations.
In general, contexts of coal mining safety involve technology, administration and socioeconomic environment as well. This paper presents statistical analysis of China coal mine accidents in recent years and analyzes the reasons causing coal mining high risk from technical and socioeconomic viewpoints. Social and economic reform has been unleashing social, economical factors that are driving a fundamental transformation of new workplace safety problems and making China coal mining safety take on Chinese features. Compared with major state-owned and local state-owned coalmines, township and village coalmines are most dangerous coal mines with highest occupational risks. The incidence and death toll of ceiling accidents are higher than those of accidents such as gas, machinery, electricity, transportation, flood, and fire. New organizational risks appeared with rapid development of state-owned coal mines’ reorganization. Low skilled labors restrict both technical renovation and safety management. The Government has adopted a systematic arrangement to improve coal mining safety such as closing the township and village coalmines that cannot meet the standard of safety, reinforcing the supervision over coal mining safety, strengthening technological renovation and enhancing work safety input.
Mining remains one of the most hazardous occupations worldwide and underground coal mines are especially notorious for their high accident rates. In this work, we provide an overview of the broad and multi-faceted topic of safety in the mining industry. After reviewing some statistics of mining accidents in the United States, we focus on one pervasive and deadly failure mode in mines, namely explosions. The repeated occurrence of mine explosions, often in similar manner, is the loud unfinished legacy of mining accidents and their occurrence in the 21st century is inexcusable and should constitute a strong call for action for all stakeholders in this industry to settle this problem. We analyze one such recent mine disaster in which deficiencies in various safety barriers failed to prevent the accident initiating event from occurring, then subsequent lines of defense failed to block this accident scenario from unfolding and to mitigate its consequences. We identify the technical, organizational, and regulatory deficiencies that failed to prevent the escalation of the mine hazards into an accident, and the accident into a “disaster”. This case study provides an opportunity to illustrate several concepts that help describe the phenomenology of accidents, such as initiating events, precursor or lead indicator, and accident pathogen. Next, we introduce the safety principle of defense-in-depth, which is the basis for regulations and risk-informed decisions by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and we examine its relevance and applicability to the mining system in support of accident prevention and coordinating actions on all the safety levers, technical, organizational, and regulatory to improve mining safety. The mining system includes the physical confines and characteristics of the mine, the equipment in the mine, the individuals and the organization that operate the mine, as well as the processes and regulatory constraints under which the mine operates. We conclude this article with the proposition for the establishment of defense-in-depth as the guiding safety principle for the mining industry and we indicate possible benefits for adopting this structured hazard-centric system approach to mining safety.
In UK industry, particularly in the energy sector, there has been a movement away from ‘lagging’ measures of safety based on retrospective data, such as lost time accidents and incidents, towards ‘leading’ or predictive assessments of the safety climate of the organisation or worksite. A number of different instruments have been developed by industrial psychologists for this purpose, resulting in a proliferation of scales with distinct developmental histories. Reviewing the methods and results from a sample of industrial surveys, the thematic basis of 18 scales used to assess safety climate is examined. This suggests that the most typically assessed dimensions relate to management (72% of studies), the safety system (67%), and risk (67%), in addition themes relating to work pressure and competence appear in a third of the studies.
This paper reviews 23 studies that have examined safety climate within commercial and military aviation. The safety climate factors identified in the aviation safety climate questionnaires were found to be consistent with the literature examining safety climate in non-aviation high reliability organizations. Therefore, it was concluded that the aviation safety climate tools had some construct validity (the extent to which the questionnaire measures what it is intended to measure). However, the majority of the studies made no attempt to establish the discriminate validity (the ability of the tool to differentiate between organizations or personnel with different levels of safety performance) of the tools. It is recommended that rather than constructing more aviation safety climate questionnaires, researchers should focus on establishing the construct and discriminate validity of existing measures by correlating safety climate with other metrics of safety performance. It is recognized that the accident rate in commercial aviation is too low to provide a sufficiently sensitive measure of safety performance. However, there are other measures of safety performance, collected as part of a company’s Aviation Safety Action Program or Flight Operational Quality Assurance, which could be used to assess the discriminate validity of an aviation safety climate tool.
This study tests the applicability of a participatory behavior-based injury prevention approach integrated with safety culture initiatives. Sixteen small metal industry enterprises (10-19 employees) are randomly assigned to receive the intervention or not. Safety coaching of owners/managers result in the identification of 48 safety tasks, 85% of which are solved at follow-up. Owner/manager led constructive dialogue meetings with workers result in the prioritization of 29 tasks, 79% of which are accomplished at follow-up. Intervention enterprises have significant increases on six of eight safety-perception-survey factors, while comparisons increase on only one factor. Both intervention and comparison enterprises demonstrate significant increases in their safety observation scores. Interview data validate and supplement these results, providing some evidence for behavior change and the initiation of safety culture change. Given that over 95% of enterprises in most countries have less than 20 employees, there is great potential for adapting this integrated approach to other industries.