We are all familiar with the way that the internet has changed the way we communicate, work, socialise and play over the last two decades. The internet is now generating the beginnings of a second seismic shift – the explosion of the Internet of Things (IoT) which will fundamentally change your workplace as well as your home.
Just
as you are connecting more and more ‘things’ to make your home and your
car connected, so has begun the connection of everything in the
industrial workplace so that it can be monitored and regulated – pulled
by two key drivers – the desire to increase productivity and improve
health and safety.
The technology will be used to drive
productivity in a number of ways. Sensors embedded in every piece of
plant and machinery will monitor usage, predict breakdowns before they
happen, recommend when to replace parts to prevent downtime, and even
schedule the renting out of that machinery to be used during downtime by
the owner’s own operations.
Bodycams attached to garments can
be used to create industrial worker digital twins – the streaming of one
engineer’s on site view back to a second, perhaps more experienced
engineer sat in an office on the other side of the world, who can advise
on what action to take. Head-mounted displays can be used to view
plant, with augmented reality information superimposed on top in the
form of plans and checklists to speed tasks, and improve the order of
workflow. Alternatively, flexible displays will be built into the
sleeves of PPE garments.
All these activities involve taking
data to and from devices and sending it real-time via the internet from
one place to another, and storing it for later analysis.
It is
inevitable that the use of this technology will be extended to improve
the safety of the workforce, by increasingly using sensors to monitor in
real-time, potential environmental threats within the space in which a
group of workers operate. These sensors will generate immediate alerts
for threats such as gas, or noise or heat or cold.
Many of
these sensor devices exist today. Most of them are standalone devices
which today alert the wearer, but do not alert co-workers or the control
room. Manufacturers are beginning to incorporate Bluetooth and comms
such as cellular or wifi into these devices which will allow them to
send alerts and other data to co-workers and the control room.
With fall in cost of individual electronic sensors, and the reduction in
cost of cloud computing, it is increasingly viable to kit out
individual workers with a range of sensors to protect them from harm,
all ‘things’ in the Internet of Things. Not only can this provide
improved safety since now each worker is individually protected and
alarmed/alerted, but the data collected from each device each day can be
stored for later analysis. By combining the data streams from multiple
devices over time, it is possible to use predictive analytics to begin
to determine which worker is most at risk from what source, where and
when, allowing preventative action to be taken. Similarly, by combining
the data feeds from multiple workers, we can heatmap problems and
pinpoint where action needs to be taken.
By building a picture
of exposure of each worker to environmental threats over days, weeks,
months and years, we have the opportunity to significantly improve
occupational health monitoring in areas such as exposure to noise or
vibration or dust, as well as creating a factual record of historic
exposure – whether for good or bad.
However, these sensors are
today quite big and bulky. Incorporating them into or onto the PPE a
worker already wears, and connecting them to a washable electronic
network already embedded in the organisation’s standard PPE garments –
vests and jackets – is a convenient way of delivering the connected
worker. In time, smart connectors integrated into the garments and
delivering power up from a central hub, and data back down from each
connected device to that hub, will enable us to dispense with batteries
and comms contained in each sensor device, allowing them to become
smaller, lighter and much cheaper. In turn this will enable us to kit
out each worker with many more sensor devices, which in turn will
improve the data sets we monitor for each worker at risk in hazardous
areas.
The delivery of this vision depends upon a number of elements – both physical and ethical.
Good comms in and around the workplace is a central requirement for
real-time monitoring. Comms in confined spaces is an issue. ATEX
certification for the physical hardware – the garments, sensors, hubs
will be required for their use in the most hazardous environments, where
the value of deployment is greatest. Electronic networks embedded in
garments capable of withstanding industrial washing will be required.
The vision depends upon individuals ultimately making a judgement as to
whether their increased health and safety is worth the inevitable
resultant invasion of privacy and recording of health information.
However, consider this – a real life incident: you are walking across a
site and fall down a hole. You are not found for seven hours by your
colleagues. Did you want to be monitored when you were walking? Would
you have wished you had been tracked whilst you sat in the hole?
General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) will provide overriding
requirements across industry and will afford some protections.
But
inevitably, each enterprise and workforce will determine where the red
lines are drawn in this challenging new world. It could be that those
that draw the red lines too tightly will fail to benefit from the march
of technology, resulting in suboptimal productivity increases and
competitive disadvantage, or alternatively simply speed the march of
their replacement by robots.
Companies have the opportunity to
put a toe in the water now, pilot and learn about the benefits of
wearable technology, and how it can be harnessed within their
organisation, whilst considering what data should, and should not be
monitored and stored. Or they can wait, at the risk of finding
themselves trying to play catchup in the years ahead to those
competitors who are laying the foundations today.
About the author
Mark
Bernstein is the CEO of Wearable Technologies Limited. Originally
qualified as a Chartered Accountant with EY and with four IPOs under his
belt, Mark has 20 years’ experience building technology companies
around the world in internet, software, hardware and IP licensing and
has received strategic partner investment from companies such as IBM,
Motorola, BT, Sky and Dixons. He founded Wearable Technologies Limited
in 2014 with the objective of its applying IoT to improve industrial
worker safety as part of Industry 4.0.
