Investigation of the health and safety conditions in industrial micro, small, and medium enterprises in Iran using a weighted ELMERI method

Supporting the development of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) is key to a nation's economic growth. The aim of this study was to investigate occupational health and safety (OHS) conditions in industrial MSMEs in Kashan, a large city Iran using an ELMERI observation method, enhanced by the application of a fuzzy analytic hierarchal process to weight the nine conditions being measured. A total of 118 MSMEs in 15 types of industry were recruited in 2023. At that time, the city had 529 industrial businesses, of which 482 were MSMEs. The MSMEs were selected by sampling method and data collected using the ELMERI Observation Method from 118 MSMEs and 15 types of industry. The ELMERI indices derived from this process ranged from 31.84% (car polishing) to 67.83% (food industry) and better safety was seen in MSMEs (workers range 2-36). Analysis of importance produced weightings in the order: chemical safety (0.158), fire safety (0.144), building safety (0.135), electrical safety (0.131), personal safety behaviour (0.115), emergency response (0.098), devices and equipment safety (0.084), management safety (0.084), and ergonomics (0.051). Application of these weightings to the ELMERI indices confirmed that better scores were found in the four MSMEs, and the range was extended from car polishing (30.99) to chemical industry (74.90%). The results of model demonstrates that high robustness against variations in criterion weights. The priority, or in other words, the most important industrial sector in the opinion of experts, was the Chemical industry (score 82.39), followed by the Food industry (score 78.90), and the lowest priority was Car polishing workshops (score 34.09). The rankings of MSMEs remained almost unchanged under ± 10% perturbation. Therefore, the obtained FAHP weights can be considered stable and suitable. The new weightings of OHS conditions for ELMERI developed in this study should be replicated and used to provide targeted and meaningful interventions to reduce high accident rates, particularly in micro-enterprises.