Ranking model for human seating comfort factors in automobiles: a best worst approach

Comfortable seating in an automobile has become a necessity for travellers, rather than a luxury. Seating comfort is essentially important for the health and safety of the automobile occupants. Several factors influence human seating comfort and therefore, this paper identifies them through comprehensive literature survey and experts' opinion. Thirty-two such factors are identified and they are categorised into five main categories. Subsequently, optimal weights of these factors are computed using a novel multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) method, i.e., the best-worst method (BWM) based on which they are ranked so as to establish their importance concerning human seating comfort. Further, sensitivity analysis is carried out to ensure the robustness of the ranking results. This study is expected to assist design engineers and researchers in understanding the importance of the factors affecting human seating comfort in automobiles so that they can tackle them strategically to provide the desired seating comfort to the occupants.