Agent based simulation of workers’ behaviours around hazard areas in manufacturing sites

El Raoui, Hanane; Quigley, John; Aslan, Ayse; Vasantha, Gokula; Hanson, Jack; Corney, Jonathan; Sherlock, Andrew

Abstract

Rewards for risk taking behaviour by workers (if accidents do not occur) can be realised in the form of increased productivity or worker idle time. However, frequent unsafe behaviours of workers inevitably
results in accidents and an associated loss in productivity. Workers’ behaviour towards safety is influenced by management, who can encourage or discourage risk taking behaviour. In this paper, we explore the relationship between the perceived reward by individual workers who expose themselves to hazards and a management response in the form of inspections to monitor and address inappropriate behaviours. We conduct this study by developing an Agent Based Simulation Model, where workers are required to learn paths within a factory exposed to hazardous areas, with inspectors randomly moving around the factory to correct inappropriate behaviour if noticed. We assume workers are maximising their
anticipated reward as they learn routes through the factory. This agent based model is used to explore the impact of inspection frequency and reward perception (i.e. parameters which can be influenced by management) on the number of workplace accident. The results demonstrated that the proposed model is a valuable tool to assist the management in predicting the potential safety improvement from safety management practices focusing on safety inspections, and changing workers perceptions.

Citation

El Raoui, H., Quigley, J., Aslan, A., Vasantha, G., Hanson, J., Corney, J., & Sherlock, A. (2023). Agent based simulation of workers’ behaviours around hazard areas in manufacturing sites. In C. Currie, & L. Rhodes-Leader (Eds.), Proceedings of the Operational Research Society Simulation Workshop 2023 (SW23) (86-95). https://doi.org/10.36819/SW23.010

• Conference Name: The Operational Research Society Simulation Workshop 2023 (SW23)
• Conference Location: Southampton, UK
• Start Date: Mar 27, 2023
• End Date: Mar 29, 2023
• Acceptance Date: Jan 16, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Apr 5, 2023
• Publication Date: 2023
• Deposit Date: Mar 21, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 5, 2023
• Pages: 86-95
• Book Title: Proceedings of the Operational Research Society Simulation Workshop 2023 (SW23)
• ISBN: 978-1-7138-7095-1
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.36819/SW23.010
• Keywords: Safety, behaviour, agent based model, accidents, hazardous areas, rewards, safety inspections