Research proposal

For
Master of Science program

Research Title

An Occupational Risk Assessment of the

Industrial Process Based on FMEA and an Improved AHP
Model

By

Ahmed Abdelwahed Khamis

Teaching Assistant, Industrial Engineering Department
Faculty of Engineering, Fayoum Uni, EGYPT
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1. Problem Description
With the rapid development of International economy, the situation of safety and
production has led to an increasing number of serious problems. A variety of major
accidents occur frequently. In the professional activities of the industry, the number
of patients with diseases caused by exposure to dust, noise, radioactive materials,
other toxic and harmful substances, and other factors has gradually increased

Occupational safety and health legislation was increased, increasing in turn the
number of strict requirements on safety for enterprises and introducing a large
number of safety regulations. The occupational disease prevention law was
revised, which put forward mandatory regulatory requirements and standards for
safety and health. People oriented and paying attention to employee health and
safety has increasingly become an important symbol and a good image of modern
enterprises, which is also the focus of the occupational health and safety
management system OHSAS18001

OHSAS18001 is a kind of advanced modern safety management method, which

has been widely adopted by a majority of the countries in the world. It mainly
emphasizes the principle of systematic health and safety management. Through the
establishment of a set of occupational health and safety assurance mechanisms, the
aim is to control and reduce occupational health and safety risks and to reduce
production accidents and occupational diseases.

2. Related Work

In this section, we try to provide an idea about the basics concepts of risk
management based on the literature review. This includes a generic definition of
risk, risks management and their method.

The risk
The meaning of risk can be differed from one person to another depending on
their point of views, attitudes and experience what makes the study of risk more and
more complex. For Mazouni, the risk is an intrinsic property of any decision, it is
measured by a combination of several factors (severity, occurrence, exposure to,
etc.), although it is generally limited to two factors: severity and frequency of
occurrence of a potentially damaging accident that incorporate some exposure
factors.
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In the BS OHSAS 18001 (British Standard Occupational Health and Safety

Assessment Series), the risk is a combination of the likelihood of an occurrence of a
hazardous event or exposures to danger and the severity that may be caused by the
event or exposure.

Fmea
FMEA is an efficient tool for identifying the potential failure modes and their
effects in order to increase the reliability and safety of complex systems and
gathering the data that is necessary to decide about how to manage risks. In fact, the
purpose of this technique is to identify failure modes and their effects and corrective
actions to eliminate or reduce the probability of failure (redesign) and finally the
development of efficient maintenance system, to reduce the occurrence of potential
scenarios (Kmenta 2000; Hojjatnejad 2008; Sedagat 2008; Narayanagounder
2009; Bolbolamiri 2010; Bahrami 2012).

Unlike some other hazard identification techniques, use of the FMEA is based
on statistics and requires enough time and manpower. Without information about the
process or product, FMEA, instead relying on facts and reality will be converted to
a process based on suspicions. FMEA methodology also refers to the principles of
control and prevention of defects (Ebrahimipour 2009; Namdari. 2010).

AHP Model
Hastak and Shaked (2000) deploy AHP within a framework for assessing
international construction projects, with risk modeled as P-I. Although the model
provides an assessment of project risk level, we believe that the assessment
methodology is rather simplistic. Additionally, the combined assessment of risk
probability and impact using a score on a predetermined scale of 0100 is a concern.
A DSS for managing risk in the early stages of a construction project is proposed by
Dey (2001) based on AHP and decision trees. It seeks to identify the best strategy,
project scenario, for managing construction project risk through the expected
monetary value (EMV) of each risk response strategy. The approach, however, does
not quantify the impact of any risk; its output is the identification of the risk response
scenario with the lowest expected extra cost.
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3. The Research objectives

In order to effectively analyze, control, and prevent occupational health risk and
ensure the reliability of the weight, a method based on FMEA (failure mode and
effects analysis) and an improved AHP (analytic hierarchy process) model was
established. The occupational Risk Assessment of the occupational health and safety
management system (OHSAS18001) of the Process industry is taken as an example,
the three most significant risk factors (fall, electrical shock, and gas) are selected as
the research objects, the FMEA method is used, an expert questionnaire is carried
out to establish the comprehensive assessment matrix of each indicator according to
the RPN (risk priority number) value, and, finally, a case study is conducted through
the FMEA and the improved AHP model The results show that the occupational
disease of the processes industrys occupational health and safety management
system belongs to a general grade.

The improved AHP and FMEA comprehensive assessment model of

occupational disease is proved feasible. This method can be incorporated in the
process management of the enterprise for the purpose of occupational disease
prevention in advance and continuous improvement on the occupational health and
safety of employees. Additionally, the area research on this integrated model should
be optimized continually in actual situations.

4. Methodological Approach

4.1 Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) Workflow

The FMEA method proceeds according to the principle of plan-do-check-

action (PDCA), which focuses on occurrence analysis, detection analysis, and
severity analysis. The RPN (risk priority number) value determines the FMEA mode
and which kind of correction action to take.
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Fig.1 FMEA Workflow.

4.2 Improved Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)

The improved analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is based on fuzzy

mathematics with the principle of fuzzy relation synthesis. It is a method for making
certain unclear boundaries and non-quantitative factors quantifiable and then
comprehensively evaluated.
It is quantified by constructing a fuzzy set of hierarchical fuzzy subsets to reflect
the fuzzy indicators being evaluated (that is to determine the membership degree),
then each indicator is evaluated by the principle of fuzzy transformation

4.3 Occupational Risk Assessment of Process Industry

OHSAS18001 Based on FMEA and an Improved AHP Model

The common occupational hazards in the Processes industry are dust, noise,
vibration, harmful gas, heat radiation, occupational injury, and so on, where dust,
noise, and gas have caused great harm to peoples health. These three common risk
factors are analyzed and evaluated in this paper.
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4.3.1 Assessment Factor Sets

This occupational disease assessment of OHSAS18001 includes 3 first-grade
indicators and 10 second-grade indicators.
4.3.2 Assessment Decision Sets
The occupational disease assessment of OHSAS18001 can be divided into four
grades: very good, relatively good, general, and not good
4.3.3 Assessment Weight Sets
The importance among indicators is assessed and scored by experts. The weight
value of each indicator is determined, and the specific values are constructed.
4.3.4 Consistency Checking
4.3.5 Fuzzy Comprehensive Assessment Matrix
The membership degree in this case is obtained by probability statistics. The failure
mode questionnaire was distributed and then recovered.
4.3.6 Comprehensive Fuzzy Assessment

5. Research Plan
The main activities that will be carried out during this research are summarized
in the following table.

Activity ID Activity Description Duration

1 Literature review, and problem definition 5 Months

2 Gathering information Preliminary Experiments 3 Months

3 Model building and verification 3 Months

4 Publishing first paper 2 Months

5 Models verification and experiments results 5 Months

6 Publishing two papers 5 Months

7 Dissertation writing 5 Months

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6. Reference

1. Occupational Disease. Hubei Provincial Safety Production Supervision Authority.

Available online:
http://www.hubeisafety.gov.cn/ajj_new/index_test1.asp?topnav=%D6%F7%D2%B3
(accessed on 18 July 2016).

2. Occupational Disease Prevention Law. Hubei Provincial Safety Production Supervision

Authority. Available online
http://www.hubeisafety.gov.cn/ajj_new/shuxingcaidan/articlemore.asp?menuid=152&me
nu1= %D6%B0%D2%B5%CE%C0%C9%FA (accessed on 18 July 2016).

3. General Administration of Quality Supervision; Inspection and Quarantine of Peoples

Republic of China. National Standards of the Peoples Republic of China; GB/T28001-
2011 Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems Requirements; General
Administration of Quality Supervision; Inspection and Quarantine of Peoples Republic
of China: Beijing, China, 2001.

4. Stamatis, D.H. Failure Mode and Effect Analysis: FMEA from Theory to Execution;
ASQ Quality Press: Milwaukee, WI, USA, 2003.
5. Wilsonnhm, O.; Dell, S.W. Optimal real-time control strategies for rail transit operations
during disruptions.In Computer-Aided Scheduling; Springer: Berlin, Germany, 1999.

6. Dagsuyu, C.; Gmen, E.; Narl, M.; Kokangl, A. Classical and fuzzy FMEA risk
analysis in a sterilization unit. Comput. Ind. Eng. 2016, 101, 286294. [CrossRef]

7. Wang, G.F. The application of FMEA in quality management. Qual. Process. 2002, 11,
6063.
8. Wang, X.Z. Fuzzy Spatial Information Processing; Wuhan University Press: Wuhan,
China, 2003; pp. 130131.
9. Cui, W.B.; Wu, G.T.; Sun, P.T.; Zhang, Y.Q. Ship safety assessment based on FMEA
and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation methods. J. Harbin Eng. Univ. 2007, 28, 263268.

1. 12. Geum, Y.J.; Cho, Y.; Park, Y. A systematic approach for diagnosing service failure:
Service-specific FMEA and grey relational analysis approach. Math. Comput. Model.
2011, 54, 31263142. [CrossRef]

2. 13. Li, G.; Gao, J.M.; Jiang, H.Q. Modeling and reasoning technique of multiple failures
based on polychromatic sets. Comput. Integr. Manuf. Syst. 2007, 13, 643648.