Industry 4.0 is a reality, ushered in by technological innovations and characterized by optimized efficiency, reduced waste, and strategic safety.
Connected technologies, IIoT, and wearables harness the power of data to improve risk management, operational safety, maintenance, and operational excellence. This power must be extended to enhance and revitalize industrial compliance and reporting processes.
Industrial Compliance and Reporting
Inspections and audits are indispensable to modern industrial spaces. They prevent quality defects, process deviations, and even equipment failure. Ensuring proper audits and inspections supports both the top and bottom lines by maintaining quality throughout an enterprise.
However, paper-based inspection tools and analog reporting methods are not enough to properly address complex SOPs or work instructions. By their very nature, these methods are slow and often have many errors.
Further compliance and reporting challenges are:
- Manual inspection forms and checklists add to the administrative burden. The absence of clear and real-time data prevents opportunities to drive continuous improvement.
- Paper-based and manual checklists are limited on the variety of inspection data and information that can be collected. Certain inspection steps might benefit from video and real-time documentation.
- Inspection forms and checklists are also hard to update and seldom reflect the active quality alerts or engineering change orders.
Many industrial workplaces are inherently dangerous. To keep them safe, organizations must follow procedures laid down by health and safety officials and document their compliance constantly. Given these complications, inspectors and workers alike need a technological boost to both their inspection and reporting methods
Advanced Upgrades
Digital technologies, wearables, and IIoT give inspections, audits, and reporting a new lease of life in the industrial setting.
By leveraging these tools, organizations can:
- Conduct remote audits
- Locate workers and data in real-time
- Provide a greater amount of connection, and in turn safety
Ruggedized wearables and IIoT devices give organizations the capacity to conduct comprehensive audits remotely. Which is especially useful for hazardous, yet strict industries like nuclear energy. The data generated from the device network provides clarity, while inspectors can do detailed product and equipment quality checks without physically being there.
With wearables and IIoT, devices, tools, and equipment can be tracked and maintained with ease. In addition, they can ensure that only authorized personnel access hazardous or restricted areas.
Real-time Location Services (RTLS), lockouts, geofences, zone marking, and controlled access combined with proximity detection ensure better compliance and safety.
Wearable technology and IIoT applications ensure greater compliance and offer unified safety. This makes FME (Foreign Material Exclusion) walk-down inspections in nuclear and other hazardous industrial areas easier and safer.
Connected Workplace
A connected workplace powered by wearables and IIoT provides high-quality data for informed decision-making and improved results all-around. Applying this technology properly is an effective way to simplify reporting and provide high-quality data on industrial assets.
Whether it is the air quality or PPE protocol compliance, connected technologies are transforming audits and inspections, ensuring they become safer, more accurate, and deliver better, more valuable insights.
About Guardhat
Guardhat is pioneering end-to-end connected worker safety solutions for industrial workers. We offer cutting-edge, wearable technology; a proprietary connected worker platform – unrivaled in its ability to ingest, manage and analyze unstructured data; easy to deploy monitoring and reporting software; and a growing ecosystem of partner integrations.
Guardhat enables companies to monitor worker location, health, and work environment to shorten reaction time and help proactively solve safety challenges. We hold 15 patents in real-time location systems, wearable solution design, and connected worker software. If you are interested in our connected safety solutions – including situational awareness, environmental and biometric monitoring, multi-modal communication, RTLS, Covid-19, and advanced technology solutions – contact us to arrange a demo.
