How Manufacturers Use the IoT to Improve Plant Safety

As your work environment becomes increasingly interconnected and dynamic, masses of data will be flowing through your facility every day. But are you getting the most out of it? And are you using it to tackle one of the most important challenges in any facility: keeping your workforce safe?

We often hear about how data collected and transmitted through IoT-enabled devices are used to measure and enhance performance. An aspect that tends to be discussed less, however, is the central role it can play in improving the safety and security of your plant.

For example, by combining IoT technology with comprehensive Big Data analysis, you can better monitor and interpret KPIs that reveal important trends in plant safety, such as injuries and near misses, equipment malfunctions, vehicle accidents (however minor), chemical spillages, property damage, and employee absences. 

Better Data, Investigated Properly

Left to our own devices (excuse the pun), we humans can be a pretty unreliable gauge of risk and incident frequency, tending to over or underestimate depending on our level of optimism. Plus, unless something serious occurs, many people downplay a near-miss or potentially dangerous behavior, preferring not to make a “fuss”.

This leads to underreporting or even non-reporting of safety issues, which in turn skews your metrics. Without clear, accurate, up-to-the-minute data, it’s very difficult to get a clear picture of what’s really happening in your facility, where risks are emerging - or when things are about to go wrong.
Not so with IoT data. When you’re using objective, automated methods like sensors and machine data to track problems, you simply get the cold, hard, facts.

What’s more, you get these insights in real-time, allowing you to jump in and address any safety issues immediately. This makes it far easier to comply with health and safety (and environmental) regulations - and to keep your workers out of harm’s way.

These insights will soon flag up gaps in your reporting, too. As you focus on monitoring processes that yield data useful from an operational point of view, you’ll begin to notice areas of the business where things are more opaque. 

The key is to face these transparency issues head-on, figuring out how to extend your data capture and make better use of IoT technology. Your priority must always be the wellbeing of your team, even if that means extra work initially to make sure you’re monitoring hazards and equipment, everywhere you can.

Preventing Equipment Malfunctions

IoT-enabled devices come into play in just about every part of a modern manufacturing facility, so there are multiple channels that could potentially feed into your safety monitoring. One major one, however, is predicting and preventing equipment malfunctions.

According to the International Labor Organization, 321,000 workers die every year as a result of workplace incidents, while a further 317 million face non-fatal occupational hazards. That’s 151 people encountering an accident in the workplace every 15 seconds - and equipment malfunctions are a leading cause.

Here’s where real-time IoT data from all your machines is so valuable. By tracking performance and monitoring any potential problems, you can figure out in advance when a piece of equipment needs maintenance. You don’t have to wait for something to go wrong. 

What’s more, this live data is transferred automatically to control rooms, without the need to manually enter anything. If you have this hooked up to a powerful data analysis or business intelligence platform, you can identify emerging hazards and anomalous results swiftly, jumping in where needed to remedy the problem. 

Plus, you can analyze this data over extended periods to calculate long term risk exposure, hazardous conditions or unsafe operational procedures. This gives you the chance to introduce new safeguards and better systems to keep your colleagues from harm.

Incorporating Wearables

Monitoring equipment is one thing, but you may be wondering how data collection works when you’re talking about injuries to people. 

Again, small injuries in the workplace are woefully underreported. This is a big problem because it makes it harder to spot patterns and problems which could be fixed with a few tweaks to the way you work. Even when a minor injury is noted down, it can be tricky to connect it to the bigger picture - a history of similar accidents in your plant.

Wearable IoT technology is helping to fix this issue. With the right wearables, employees are continually monitored, with data collected on health metrics like movement and activity, heart rate, fatigue, stress, and even exposure to CO2 and sulfur dioxide. 

This helps you figure out where and when workers are put under too much pressure or in potentially dangerous situations. It also helps you to figure out whether you and your team are always in compliance with relevant rules and regulations, which can be important when dealing with liability and insurance costs. 

In very high-risk industries, tagging technology adds an additional level of safety monitoring by helping you keep an eye on who is working on a job at any given time. You can also see how long they’ve worked in a single sting and track their location to ensure they’re successfully evacuated in an emergency.

The IoT and Plant Security

Bear in mind that rolling out the IoT in your facility increases safety but also creates new, very different, security risks. 

That’s because all those connected devices increase your digital threat surface - i.e. the range of potential entry points a hacker could try to exploit. To keep your data secure. You need to ensure that you have a comprehensive IT security strategy in place that takes into account every smart device, machine or another item of equipment, not just traditional IT hardware like computers and laptops. 

Don’t forget to include Bring-Your-Own-Devices (BYOD) like workers’ smartphones and wearables, too. Any malware that infects any individual device can spread like wildfire through your system, while weak security on one person’s phone or tablet could open the door to cybercriminals looking to get into your network, steal sensitive data or disrupt operations.

Final Thoughts

A grand shift towards the IoT opens up fantastic opportunities for data collection and analysis leading to safer facilities and more efficient processes. At the same time, bear in mind that, for everything to work as it should, you need to be able to guarantee uninterrupted internet access. 

While in the past a brief loss of power could cause machines to halt for a minute or two, in today’s factories and plants this can lead to substantial delays. You need to wait not only for the power to return but for the WiFi to be restored, digital systems to spring back into action and individual devices and machines to start talking to each other again.

This increases the risk of errors, malfunctions and lost data - if your core utilities are not guaranteed. It’s more vital than ever that you have a reliable backup plan for power failures. Ideally, one that enables seamless transfer from the main system to the backup power station or generators, with zero downtime when required.

Find out more about our solutions for the manufacturing sector

Be always the first to know by subscribing to our newsletter