Evaluation of the occupational health and safety management system developed using Industry 4.0 technologies with fuzzy-based approaches

Occupational health and Safety; It covers a versatile field developed to identify factors that may occur in the workplace or during the execution of work and endanger the health and well-being of employees. Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems can be defined as a comprehensive approach created to provide a safer working environment in line with the general strategies of organizations during the implementation of workplace processes. To date, companies have used various methods and tools to improve the performance of occupational health and safety management systems. The most important among these tools and methods are technology-based ones. Industry 4.0 has the potential to contribute significantly to the improvement of both production activities and worker health and safety by making the production and service environment smarter. Although current scientific studies indicate that there are many obstacles to the use of Industry 4.0 technologies in the process of increasing the occupational health and safety performance of companies, no research has been conducted that includes a comprehensive numerical analysis on this subject. Therefore, the aim of this study is to determine the factors that direct or hinder the use of Industry 4.0 technologies in occupational health and safety management systems and to analyze the cause-effect relationship between these factors using multi-criteria decision-making methods. In this study, first of all, a detailed literature review was conducted to determine whether the driving forces (factors) or the hindering forces (factors) regarding the use of Industry 4.0 technologies in occupational health and safety management systems came to the fore, and Fuzzy TOPSIS-based Force Field Analysis was applied. In the second stage, focusing on the hindering forces, the cause-and-effect relationship regarding these obstacles was examined with Fuzzy DEMATEL analysis. In the third stage, the validity of the findings obtained from Fuzzy DEMATEL was analyzed using the Nominal Group Technique and Fuzzy DELPHI. As a result of these analyses, the hindering forces with the highest impact are respectively; Inadequacy of incentives and laws, Inflexible organizational structure, Policy deficiencies, High investment need, Negative impact of established organizational culture, Lack of top management support, Lack of effective information management systems, Lack of information and training, Lack of sufficient human capital, Failure to provide short-term economic benefit, and It has been identified as the lack of effective information management systems. Finally, in this study, new policy recommendations are put forward to ensure the effectiveness of Industry 4.0 applications in the field of occupational health and safety in Turkey.