Integrating occupational health and safety to operational risks in real life industrials environments: a mixed optimization approach

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A sustainable business must place increased emphasis on balancing, indeed optimizing its performance imperatives with the wellbeing of its workers. In a context of sustainable development and unbridled innovation, the reality of our businesses includes uncertainty and constant adaptation and adjustment. Businesses must be resilient, that is, robust when conditions are foreseeable, and agile in the face of uncertainty.****The models available for optimal interdisciplinary and integrated management of operational and occupational health and safety (OHS) risks are based on the hypothesis that the business system represented behaves predictably and can be deconstructed entirely into its component parts. These models also aim to confine all system variability within established boundaries.****To understand business management systems under real industrial conditions and support decision making, it is crucial that the models used to represent system functioning evolve over time towards integrated systemic and proactive models that allow combining diverse sources of variability. The aim of the proposed research activities is therefore to meet these scientific challenges by applying a new research strategy to improve fundamental knowledge on complex socio-technical modeling.****We shall use a mixed approach (qualitative and quantitative) based on an integrated design. Firstly, a human factors study will be done to identify the operational and OHS risks to consider. Secondly, using a resilience engineering method, a modeled prototype will be constructed then validated. Variability sources will be captured by the model, as well as how each source affects the models' functions and impacts trade-offs between operational and OHS risks. Thirdly, risk hierarchy networks will be constructed. Using an artificial intelligence algorithm the most influencing factors (operational and OHS) will be identified. Finally, the results from the three steps above will be compared to identify, for the two cases under study, how operational and OHS risks, as well as their uncertainties, can be integrated, balanced and optimized, thus strengthening the recommendations made to businesses.***This proposal will provide improved tools to guide today's decision-makers in choosing the means to balance and optimize the imperatives of production and OHS. Scientific advances are expected for two high-priority industrial sectors in Canada, namely natural resources and aerospace.**