A stratified Bayesian decision-making model for occupational risk assessment of production facilities

In the production industry, harmony and good management of the workplace environment, production machinery/vehicles, and workers are necessary to carry out production by occupational health and safety (OHS) principles. Therefore, occupational risk assessment (ORA) is crucial for manufacturing-based industries. When deciding on the prioritization of risks in ORA, adding to the analysis “how the parameters defining the risk changes in possible different states in the future” positively affects the soundness of decision-making. Therefore, this study aims to develop a unique ORA model handling future changes in the importance levels of risk parameters in the risk assessment process. To this aim, the concept of stratification and the best-worst method (BWM) are used together to determine the importance weights of the risk parameters in the ORA. In addition, the Bayesian version of BWM considers more than one expert's evaluations without losing information. In a nutshell, an approach called stratified Bayesian BWM (SBBWM) that can be used for further studies has been introduced to the literature. The technique determines the priority scores of each hazard by technique for order preference by similarity to the ideal solution sorting (TOPSIS-Sort) method. Thus, while determining each hazard's priority score and order, the class of this risk has also been determined. The proposed approach evaluated thirty-six risks encountered in manufacturing, storage, handling, and laboratory processes of a flour production facility. Control measures to be taken for each risk were also determined. Methodologically, various scenario analyses and sensitivity studies were conducted to reveal how the results changed in different conditions. The proposed approach provides a more comprehensive procedure for production facilities than traditional methods and avoids the deficiencies of traditional methods.