Enhancing Workplace Safety in the Manufacturing Industry with AI

Adapting to Changing Work Environments:

The world of work is in a constant state of evolution. Failing to keep up with technological advancements can put organizations and individuals at a disadvantage. Consider the automotive industry in the 1980s: those manufacturers that embraced assembly robots outperformed those heavily reliant on human labor. Robots offered speed and safety, allowing humans to focus on tasks where they excelled. Successful manufacturers leverage technology for automation, relying on a smaller, skilled workforce to oversee operations and address issues promptly.

Safeguarding Equipment and Personnel:

In manufacturing, machinery must be accessible for maintenance, yet inoperative to prevent accidents. Interlocks play a pivotal role in equipment safety. When a guard is lifted, a door opened, or a light curtain breached, the machinery halts until the guard is secured or the door closed. In some cases, machinery cannot be accessed until it's de-energized and isolated.

Consequences of Safety Breaches:

Despite safety measures, injuries, including amputations, occur annually due to interlock tampering or circumvention. Some opt for maintenance while machinery is operational, a hazardous practice that may lead to equipment damage, production delays, and penalties. In certain instances, people find unauthorized means, bypassing interlocks or accessing machinery through "backdoors."

Manufacturing accidents result in lifelong disabilities, financial penalties, legal investigations, and damage to an organization's reputation. In one accident, an engineer at a packaging manufacturer went inside a fixed perimeter machine guard and closed the interlock gate from the inside. He asked someone to switch the machine back on. His sleeve was drawn into the machine, and his hand was amputated. Although it was reattached, he hasn’t regained full control of the hand and continues to suffer pain. After the accident, the regulator wouldn’t let the machinery be used for two days while they investigated – that’s lost time, lost production, and lost confidence from clients due to delayed orders. 18 months after the accident, the company was fined £115,000. There was evidence that this procedure had been allowed on multiple previous occasions, so the company was considered at fault.

A Safer Future with Proactive Safety:

To mitigate such risks and legal repercussions, proactive safety measures are crucial. A system that highlighted these infringements and maintained a record, along with explanations for staff about the dangers, could have served as a defense against prosecution. Ideally, it might have even prevented the accident altogether.

But how much time would the safety team need to detect such incidents and pinpoint their locations? They can't dedicate their entire day to monitoring a single type of hazard.

An alternative solution is to invest in an AI-driven computer vision system like Protex AI. With this technology, you can establish rules to identify when individuals enter restricted areas, such as inside interlocked gates or behind production lines. Safety staff can then review data from multiple production lines in a single afternoon, rather than spending days on each one. This allows them to pinpoint where issues are arising and collaborate with workers to eliminate the need for unauthorized and hazardous shortcuts.

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