Selection of Personal Protective Equipment - a complex issue of multi-criteria analysis

“Gheorghe Asachi” Technical University of Iasi, Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering, Department of Materials Engineering and Industrial Safety, 700050, Iasi, Romania

^* Corresponding author: stefan-lucian.toma@academic.tuiasi.ro

Abstract

It is known the fact that in both the Member States of the European Union and the United States, the provision of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to workers who are carrying out their activity in different sectors is done in accordance with existing legislation and regulations specific to each state. However, choosing a suitable PPE for a particular workplace is a difficult task to perform given that there are a variety of PPE on the market that perform, in different ways these functions: to prevent an accident - from the same place of work. to protect the health and safety of workers and to minimize damage from any possible accident. Comparing the alternatives, in order to find the most favourable protective equipment specific to a particular workplace, is a complex multi-criteria decision problem that sometimes is difficult to solve. In this paper we approached a method of multi-criteria analysis of the decision, respectively we applied a Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) to select PPE -favourable to a certain job: mechanical locksmith. Our work allowed us to find the dominant criteria and the critical factors in the products evaluation, multi-criteria evaluation AHP of employees’ requirements, regarding PPE and ergonomic aspects.