Determination of ergonomic adequacy with principal component analysis (PCA) in furniture enterprises

Abstract

The Turkish furniture industry has a view of mainly workshop-type, small-scale businesses mostly working with traditional methods. By both office and employment levels in furniture group of products, in the Aegean region Izmir, Denizli, and Manisa are among the provinces where most employees are employed. In these provinces, there are smaller firms with six persons and employment levels below the average in Turkey in terms of the number of employees per business. To most effectively take advantage of the labor force, physical environmental conditions must be adapted to humans. Employees in unsuitable conditions cannot be efficient as they do not feel comfortable. This research work in the enterprises engaged in the production of furniture was conducted to determine the ergonomic adequacy of work and physical environmental conditions by employees. For this purpose, a total of 400 employees from the small-scale enterprises engaged in the production of furniture in Denizli, Izmir, and Manisa Provinces were included in the research. In the study, the assessment of ergonomic adequacy of the enterprise by employees was measured by their responses to 51 Likert type sentences. In this study, a Principal Component Analysis of dimensionality reduction methods was used.