A fuzzy logic approach to analyzing occupational health and safety risk assessment methods: A case study of sme

The concept of risk assessment has gained much importance with the increase of the number and diversity of the risks in the field of occupational health and safety due to the developments in science, industry and technology and also with the legal obligations concerning this subject. In our country, in order to prevent work accidents and occupational diseases Occupational Health and Safety Act, numbered 6331, was introduced. On the very basis of the preventive approach of this act lies risk assessment. In this thesis study, four different risk assessment methods which are widely used on SMEs were analyzed and applied on a SME. These methods are; "3T Risk Assessment Method", "5x5 L-type Matrix Risk Assessment Method, "Fine-Kinney Risk Assessment Method" and "Risk Assessment Method of Failure Mode and Affects Analysis". Practice of risk assessment in this study serves as a model for other SMEs as well. Risk priority scores, which were obtained by using the four different risk assessment methods aforementioned, were analyzed in the settings of MATLAB and Simulink with the approach of fuzzy logic and an inference was reached containing these four risk assessment methods. In this study, single risk importance degree compassing the common outcome of these four methods was obtained by converting the risk importance degrees which expresses precisions like "Too low", "Low", "High", "Too high" into risk importance degrees which can be expressed in certain opacity degrees. By this means a risk hierarchy was obtained for all of the risks in the business.