Ranking the health precautions for the ‘new normal’ after the COVID-19 outbreak in production environments

Abstract

Objectives. With the outbreak of coronavirus (COVID-19) about a year ago and its quick spread all around the world, some serious decisions had to be made like halting production temporarily. The world now tries to take back its normal pace thanks to some medical improvements. However, the ‘new normal’ is unlikely to follow the old habits in which COVID-19 never appeared. In production environments, a number of new precautions should be defined to prevent a spread of COVID-19 disease among employees in the new normal period. The aim of this study is to propose an analytical approach to define these new precautions and prioritize them. Methods. To determine the precautions, open archive publications of the Turkish Health Ministry and the World Health Organization, and the opinions of occupational physicians and academicians were considered. Twenty-five precautions were specified under three main headings. The Pythagorean fuzzy analytical hierarchy process was employed to gain the rank of precautions. Results. The most critical precautions and sub-precautions were determined as organizational precautions and developing an appropriate working model to ensure social distance. Conclusion. Using the determined order of measures, the managers are able to apply them, starting from the most effective ones.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• occupational health and safety
• new normal
• decision-making
• manufacturing environments

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.