İNŞaat mühendiSLİĞİ anabiLİm dali

European Union Harmonisation With Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises of the Turkish Furniture Industry
To be a member of EU, primarily, Turkey is required to be harmonized all its legislation with the EU. Not only had to be a member of EU, but also as our age required, improving the legislation and management mindset is very important. The main purpose of this study, the Turkish Furniture Industry enterprises compliance conditions to the EU technical legislation have evaluated. Thus, It is expected to contribute that enterprises are quickly identified the relevant EU legislation and are determined compliance conditions evaluating their structure.
According to TURKSTAT’s 2012 data, the total number of enterprises in the Turkish Furniture Industry is 31,089 and 151,904 employees are worked. The number of SMEs operating in this area was determined 29,346. 24105 SMEs are located in 19 cities. These cities are Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Bursa, Kayseri, Eskişehir, Adana, Hatay, Samsun, Antalya, Sakarya, Kocaeli, Konya, Trabzon, İçel, Aydın, Gaziantep, Manisa and Balıkesir, respectively.
In the study, three-phase application plan was followed. In the first stage, the Turkish Furniture Industry compliance with the EU legislation was evaluated and business management conditions of the industry was revealed. In the second stage, adequacy of the work environment for the Turkish Furniture Industry was investigated and revealed. In the last stage, wood dust exposure seen as a critical factor for EU legislation in the work environment was intended to be identified with current data.
In the first stage of the study, questionnaire method was applied. Data were collected from 424 enterprises by questionnaire applied with CATI technique. For the second stage, some parameters were determined such as thermal comfort, noise and lighting. Totally 255 enterprises were visited for all these parameters. Measurements were made with the help of measuring device. For this aim, Ankara region was selected as a study area. Because micro scaled enterprises are a combination and the most intense.

The obtained data was shown that 85% of the furniture enterprises are micro-scaled, are located in small industrial area or inner-city area, are produced smaller than 500 m2 small confined space, and are proprietorship. It was observed that 78% of these enterprises were not kept up with the technology enough, 70% were not exported.

The furniture enterprises when analyzed in terms of thermal comfort; 63% of these enterprises ambient temperature is below the ideal temperature were seen. Work environment is to be airless at 33%, is to be over drafty at 40% of the enterprises. Just humidity data was remained within the limit values recommended. Ambient lighting is to below 300 lux at 83% of the enterprises, 500 lux at 95%. The maximum noise exposure is above 85 dB at 99% of the enterprises.
90% of Turkey Furniture Industry enterprises, wood dust exposure in the work environment is over the limit value 5 mg/m3. 35% of these enterprises are exceeded to limit value two-fold, 40% three-fold and 15% four-fold.
As a result; the Turkish Furniture Industry in the process of integration with the EU is one of the important sectors that structural improvements need to be made quickly. For harmonization of this sector with the EU, the sector enterprises management structures and work environments are needed to be accommodated to the technical directives defined in EU legislation. For this aim, harmonization projects at different scales should be prepared and applied rapidly.