Comparison of turkey and finland in terms of occupational health and safety in manufacturing industry and an application of elmeri and OHs-MRS methods

ABSTRACT Comparison of Turkey and Finland in terms of Occupational Health and Safety in Manufacturing Industry and an Application of Elmeri and OHS-MSR Methods The requirement for occupational health and safety (OHS) is increasing all over the world, as well as in Turkey, in conjunction with the development of science, industry and technology. Thanks to the Occupational Health and Safety Law, which was published on June 30, 2012 issue of the Turkish Official Journal (# 28339); OHS was extended in judicial context and new methodologies were developed for dealing with occupational accidents and diseases. However, in Turkey, occupational accidents and diseases are continuing to irrecoverably affect many people's lives due to several factors such as lack of social awareness, lack of inspection, and application disruptions. The inadequacies in Turkey's OHS practice become obvious when the official statistics concerning occupational accidents and diseases in Turkey and European Union (EU) countries are compared. In this thesis study this difference is taken into consideration; hence Turkey and Finland, which is a comparatively more developed EU country in OHS field, are compared. For this purpose; development of the Turkey's OHS culture over the years, with the manufacturing sector as the basis, is investigated. Also, comparing the current situation of our country to that of Finland, it has been attempted to identify shortcomings of our country in OHS field. In this study, also the Elmeri method which was developed by Heikki Laitinen as a performance monitoring tool and currently being used in Finnish manufacturing sector, and OHS-Management System Rating (MSR) method, which was used in the improvement project of occupational health and safety conditions in Turkey (ISGIP), are examined. Moreover, these two performance monitoring methods were put into practice for a manufacturing sector company with 450 workers located in Ankara-Sincan. Several evaluations and proposals have been made in the thesis after comparing the results obtained from the field studies of Elmeri and OHS-MSR methods and the findings within ISGIP at the end. Keywords: Comparison of Turkey and Finland, Elmeri method, Manufacturing industry, OHS, OHS in Finland, OHS in Turkey, OHS-MSR method.