Industrial businesses face increasing pressure to drive operational excellence, and that includes keeping people safe and managing costs. Legal compliance is a requirement, and budget constraints are a reality. This paper examines how connected technology can help streamline safety processes and improve worksite efficiency. It presents how data and real-time analytics from digitally connected devices using the Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT) can improve organizational productivity, compliance, and safety performance including, most crucially, response time to life-threatening incidents.
On-the-ground studies show an incident is resolved in the shortest period of time when using connected technology. Using traditional methods, the authors found incident response can take up to 3½ hours, which, when dealing with toxic gas exposure for example, only leads to the recovery of a body. With connected technology, the worker can be rescued in less than 5 minutes and their life saved. Connected technology also supports organizational environmental, social, and governance efforts by protecting people and communities with capabilities that allow for plume-dispersion modeling that can prevent downstream effects and location technology to easily find and retrieve lost devices.
Overall, the research presented in this paper determined that a more digital environment means enhanced competitiveness, compliance, and performance by delivering
- Higher quality and faster decisions
- Increased transparency, collaboration, and efficiency
- Better outcomes, including driving to net zero and saving lives