A specialist works out his skills on a virtual simulator.
When an accident occurs at work, it is a tragedy. But besides the tragedy, it is also a simple production (often worth millions of rubles), checks and commissions. In general, improving safety is purely cost-effective.
The occupational safety issue is the organization (processes) and the tools. We have been dealing with tools for many years: we have excellent video analytics for monitoring PPE, access to dangerous areas, we have wearable warning devices (including a smart helmet that even insures against collisions with a forklift, warns in time, notifies of dispatcher falls and is able to suggest escape routes ). But all this is only one part of the question: in addition to the availability of tools, you also need to correctly implement them and properly organize the security process as a whole.
We recently discussed the problems of introducing IT systems in factories both from the side of hardware and from the side of methodology and, in general, attempts to explain to all departments what is happening. And we came to a more or less unified scheme of how to make the process go to the end and then it was still supported for years. I tell you what happened approximately.
On January 28, we, together with Dell Technologies and Intel, hosted a round table on occupational health and safety. There were three parts: processes, implementation, and equipment. Here is a short report. Below are the studies that were discussed at this meeting.
Research first
In 2017 and 2018, colleagues from Industries Consulting Ecopsy conducted research and tried to understand how different companies relate to safety culture and how to develop it. The survey was conducted among customers in the Russian Federation, there were about 600 respondents. Some of the research findings can be seen on the slides:
1. Now let's talk about processes
Here are the five basic levels of safety culture:
- Pathological: minimal adherence to rules and regulations at all levels. Security processes and tools are not aligned. The accent in the activity is aimed at creating the appearance of compliance with all formal requirements.
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Each company is in a different starting position when it decides to develop a safety culture. Moreover, for example, staff can be at level 4, and practices can be at level 2, and so on. Or vice versa. The first question is always: what is the current level of safety culture, to what extent the existing system of occupational health and safety management complies with legislation and some international standards, and the most important question is what to do in order to increase the level of safety culture? Here we still need to dispel the traditional myth when they say that everything depends on top managers. Research results show that people in 2018 said they were line employees and middle managers. In 2019, even more people began to say that middle and junior managers.
Sergey Vinnik, director of projects at Industries Consulting Ecopsy, who has extensive production experience, has been working for HTC in large manufacturing companies, in metallurgy, mining, and energy, about this. His main idea is about how the methodology is built for large companies and what its practical success depends on.
2. The Sweetest Part: Piloting and Zooming
I also took part as a speaker and talked about the methodology on how to implement digital products for H&S to improve safety culture. The main direction is industrial companies with hazardous production facilities with a continuous production cycle, that is, almost all companies from the fuel and energy complex, oil and gas sector, energy, petrochemistry, metallurgy.
Now, suppose you need to implement something from IT systems into production. Questions should immediately arise:
- Where exactly should you start?
- What will be the effect?
- How to scale? Because the success of a pilot project does not mean that we can deploy it to a large enterprise.
It’s clear to start with a pilot project. Sometimes a specific product is piloted, and sometimes the idea "Let's pilot it" just pops up. And there are top mistakes at the start. Buying and selling technology, rather than solving a specific problem, is the most top-notch mistake. Then comes the classic mistake - not to measure the result. It's easy to go to a test project without metrics, but at random. Then - noncompetence. It is born either from what production makes completely by its IT department (without understanding the specifics of modern systems), or completely by a contractor without very close interaction with production IT. The company should have people who will accompany the technology, who will be able to correctly form the technical specification, who will lead the process and connect people from the market who will give fresh ideas and technologies.
We are integrating the same virtual simulator - this is a software and hardware complex that allows you to practice some skills in a virtual environment of precisely those processes that cannot be worked out in reality. For example, because you cannot take and interrupt the technological process in order to train a beginner. Well, it is much cheaper to recreate some kind of freelance situation in a virtual environment than in a real one. The second example of our digital product is the Digital Worker platform. This is the place where information from video cameras with video analytics is combined (including those controlling PPE and access zones automatically), from wearable devices (checking the same falls or giving coordinates to calculate collisions), sensors, geolocation systems, and so on. The dispatcher can see where and who, in what condition, with what PPE, what he is doing and whether the person is in order.In the case of a smart helmet in the system, it can also send commands or automatically load escape routes depending on the fire on different sensors.
Accordingly, if both solutions are not supported, they will become obsolete and useless in six months. Therefore - only a smooth transfer into operation so that production can independently work with these tools for years. It all starts with a preliminary design survey. The second is the development of a pilot project in order to show internally how it works. And remove feedback. And the third is to prepare for scaling in order for it to work not only on the local site, but throughout the entire company.
Everyone is really interested in making it safe. But the problems of enterprises in the minds of different people sound differently. And each of the functional customers - the chief engineer, the HR director, the efficiency improvement department - has a different problem, and they need to calculate different indicators. The survey I talked about earlier gives two types of results. The result is technological - that is, everything that is needed to start the tender: functional requirements, understanding of the current architecture, some kind of prototype to test. And the business result: how to sell the idea internally.
And here we will introduce such a term as "Qualification". This is a reconciliation that we are doing exactly what is needed for the business and for our potential users. And we have enough data to move on. At the first stage, before starting some innovative or IT product, you need to answer yourself a number of questions:
- what problem are we solving?
- how is this problem being solved now?
- how did we get it?
- what is the damage?
- how to digitize this damage?
The questions are very complex. And the last one is the most difficult. But if we answer these questions, then we will move to the next stage already prepared.
Also, do not forget about performance metrics: qualitative, quantitative, feedback. Because digital tools are not protected only through economic benefits. You need to choose the criteria for success and the corresponding metrics.
An example of a metric for a simulator. The word "simulator", "virtual reality" - for some they sound like some kind of incomprehensible words. But in fact, this is about training an employee, about instilling the correct skill in safe operation or the skill of safe work. A kind of dependence appears: training, instilling skills leads to an increase in the level of residual knowledge, an improvement in the quality of training and, in the future, a decrease in the probable mistakes of personnel that occur out of ignorance. In one of the factories, the most valuable thing was the reduction of personnel errors, which were only hired, because the full cycle sometimes takes years. In this situation, all other metrics are indirect.
3. And iron
Tablets for mobile applications in workshops and various control panels: for Russia, their big plus is ATEX Zone 2, Zone 22 in explosive environments, IP65 and very good cold resistance when working in severe frost.
Alexander Beloglintsev from Dell Technologies said that specialized solutions aimed at operation in an industrial environment appear in the portfolios of IT vendors. As an example, he cited the emergence of ruggedized devices and even tablets with ATEX certification.
One of the interesting methods of circumventing very complex restrictions on the requirements for the hardware in terms of vibration resistance, protection from dust, and so on is the transfer of the computing component to a remote site. Alexander recalled a case that had been worked out with one large oil and gas company, where there were requirements related to seismic resistance. Colleagues received a large questionnaire with a list of computers that have certain requirements for vibration resistance. It is clear that these are specialized computers from specialized manufacturers, and this is expensive. Dell Technologies decided to look at this problem in a different way and proposed to move the computing power outside the industrial facility. In fact, they simply placed computers or servers in a data center not in a seismically hazardous area, but simply in an ordinary office.Consequently, small boxes were already installed at the industrial facility. The cooling is passive, there are no holes in the case, attacks on these devices become less destructive when implemented, and so on.
It may seem that the purchase and selection of hardware is just a matter of choosing a vendor at the final stage, but in practice, the type of solution often depends on the cost of delivery. And since more and more things in OT are related to IT solutions, this directly affects the budget.
And returning to the same simulators: Dell Technologies, like other players in the market, has entire lines of devices designed to work with VR. Therefore, you can easily create a stationary kit for connecting several helmets, fast, or very compact for packing in a suitcase. And even laptops have already appeared that you can take with you in your backpack and connect helmets to them. And this makes it possible to move with such a kit, create it in a mobile version and take it with you wherever you need it.
By the way, the Don training center was built on their hardware. One of the projects was the creation of a space simulator. In confined spaces, placing a computer in a cab that can rotate and swivel at any angle is very difficult. Therefore, they used a small "box" where a video image from a remote computer is broadcast.
I know it sounds a little strange, but this is something that very few people have done until recently, because there were no ready-made solutions from vendors.
Tell us about your implementations, please
It seems to us that we have already stepped on many rakes in all three vectors: the lack of understanding how the implementation process works, and piloting-scaling, and the choice of hardware. But if you tell what epic failures your production has been (just type, no names mentioned) it helps.