Ergonomic Criteria Based Material Handling Equipment Selection

Introduction

Globalization and technology have been very developed and serious recently. With the rapid development of technology, competition between companies is also increasing rapidly. Firms are working to reduce their costs and increase their profit shares in order to survive in this competitive environment and increase their market share. Reaching customers faster and providing better service are among the goals of the companies. With the rapid development of technology, it is now an imperative that factories switch to automation under difficult competitive conditions, increasing production speed, product quality and also reducing production costs. Employee health is very important because of the risk of injury if they bear heavy loads. The use of material handling equipment is important for businesses in this respect.

Kay (1998) examined the material handling equipment in 5 different categories.

• 1.

  Transport equipment: These are the equipment used to transport the material from one location to another location.

• 2.

  Positioning equipment: These are the equipment that enables management and positioning on one location of the material.

• 3.

  Unit load formation equipment: These are the limiting equipment that protects the integrity of the materials during transportation and stocking.

• 4.

  Storage equipment: These are the equipment used to store the material in a certain place for a while.

• 5.

  Identification and control equipment: These are the equipment used to coordinate and track the movements of materials within the facility between facilities, suppliers and customers.

Lifting, transporting heavy objects, performing some movements continuously, and realizing work in the inappropriate posture causes physical strain in workers. Many workers carry risks associated with the musculoskeletal system as they do not properly use body mechanics when lifting loads. Awareness can be raised on these workers with the right position lifting training. Ramazzini realized that some dangerous devices could enter the body through breathing and skin, and show harmful effects on the body, and noise could cause hearing loss. However, besides the physical and chemical properties of the study area, he also wrote that there is a large group of diseases related to posture, repetitive movements and heavy lifting. Musculoskeletal system diseases have a high impact on the individual's well-being and quality of life. Chronic pain associated with musculoskeletal diseases affect many aspects of life and reduces quality of life. It causes chronic pain due to musculoskeletal diseases and impaired physical and mental health causes impairment of social functions (Aslan, 2019; Franco, 1999).

Businesses want to reduce costs, keep workforce efficient, and keep equipment investment at a low level by keeping minimum level transactions with no added value. One of the most common transactions with no added value within the enterprise is the transportation of materials. Material handling operations prevent efficient utilization of the facility area and it also causes the additional costs for businesses. Material handling refers to the processes of loading materials onto a material handling equipment, moving from one location to another location with the help of material handling equipment, and unloading the material from the transportation equipment to the relevant location. The most important element of the material handling process is the equipment used in the process. When the equipment market is analyzed, it is seen that there is a wide variety of material handling equipment. As the variety of equipment increases, selection criteria also vary. When more than one criterion is considered in the selection of equipment, the selection of equipment can be evaluated as a multi-criteria decision making problem (Dur, 2019).