Technique to identify and characterize new and emerging risks: A new tool for application in manufacturing processes

Abstract

The application of advanced automation technology in manufacturing process has increased manufacturing flexibility tremendously. The reasons to automate manufacturing processes include increased quality and efficiency demands, as well as improve the occupational safety and health. However, the fast pace of innovation and the rapid roll-out of new technologies and new products, as well as the creation of new jobs or modification of traditional jobs, requiring new skills, mean that a wider working population faces new risks. Thus, besides traditional occupational risks, automated manufacturing processes can generate others, referred to as “new and emerging risks” (NERs). These NERs may be linked either to the manufacturing process as a whole (system) or to specific components. This connection presents at least two complex problems in the field of occupational safety and health. Firstly, there is currently no technique aimed at identifying and characterizing these risks in order to explain the features that confer them the status of new and/or emerging. Secondly, it is not possible to study the complex interrelations between the features of the system NERs and its components. With the aim of resolving these problems, with the present work a technique in order to identify and characterize the NERs generated by a system and its components has been developed. This technique has been applied to a case study in the context of automated manufacturing processes.