Assessment of Energy Expenditure of Workers by Using ‘ahp’: a Case Study of Process Industry

The objective of research study is to develop an efficient multi-criteria approach for evaluation of various influencing factors that have a major impact on energy expenditure of workers engaged in manual lifting and carrying tasks. The present case study under taken sixty male workers having age between 30-60 years and performing manual lifting and carrying of 50kg fertilizer filled sac up to a distance of eight steps. Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) was found to be maximum among youngest age group i.e. in group I (30-40yrs) followed by group II (40-50yrs) and group III (50-60yrs). This study utilized a holistic method study to solve the problems in evaluating the various influencing factor that have a major impact on energy expenditure. The factors with the highest weights are determined by using analytical hierarchy process (AHP) which resulted physical workload as the most influencing factor (0.454139) followed by physical work capacity (0.252781), type of activity (0.129274), organisational factors (0.125318) and personal factors (0.038488) respectively. The results implicates that there is a need to redesign the work content of the occupation in order to reduce excessive energy expenditure of the workers. International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process 1 Washington, D.C. June 29 – July 2, 2014 IJAHP Article: Mu, Saaty/A Style Guide for Paper Proposals To Be Submitted to the International Symposium of the Analytic Hierarchy Process 2014, Washington D.C., U.S.A.