Analytic hierarchy process to support the safety and ergonomic assessment of alternatives in “manuable” material handling

This paper has two objectives: to describe a multi-criteria ergonomic approach for choosing the best alternative for “manuable” material handling, and to show the application of this methodology to a case study. In this paper, the authors use the single-word term “manuable” to refer to the definition “can be performed manually”. The case study results validated the approach and indicated that the use of the manipulator tested may be ergonomically preferable to manual material handling in situations in which the handled weight is large (20 kg) and when the weight of the load is low (5 kg), albeit slightly.