Covid-19 isn’t going away soon…… What’s your plan to make YOUR team safe in the workplace?

	Thankfully Covid-19 seems to be on the wane…. But it will take a long time to disappear fully, and it is unlikely to be the last pandemic. This means that YOU may need to make the workplace safe for your team and perhaps your customers.

The good news is that many organisations have successfully implemented a Work-From-Home strategy….. And perhaps it has been much easier than we had dreamed it could be – certainly full or part-time WFH will now be a real option for many office workers.

The bad news is that solving the problem for workers who MUST be in their workplace is much, much harder.

Thankfully there ARE tools and solutions (automated Artificial Intelligence) that can help.

Solving the problem falls into several areas

• Supplying / enforcing use of PPE
• Providing hygiene solutions – hand sanitiser and washing facilities
• Making social distancing easy & ensuring that it happens

The last of the above – social distancing, is easy to request, but much harder to implement & has a whole set of sub-problems

• Filtering out people who have symptoms e.g. high temperature, that they themselves may be unaware of
• Re-arranging the environment to provide enough isolation where individuals work
• Reducing hotspots where people might struggle to keep a suitable distance
• Changing processes to reduce face-face interactions where possible
• Encouraging a culture where people choose to do the right thing

For these problems we have a technology solution: IRIS, an Artificial Intelligence tool that automatically and constantly analyses what is going on in your workplace AND gives you the data to work out what is going wrong, when it is going wrong and gives you the opportunity to fix it.

• It can check who is & is not using PPE
• It can check temperature of people entering a building
• It can measure how far apart people are 24/7
• It can find hotspots where social distancing guidelines being broken
• Feedback is immediate and specific

Crucially this allows YOU to take control

• Change processes exactly where it creates problems
• Rearrange workspace to minimise squeeze points & hotspots
• Make changes AND then check if these changes were effective
• As with many processes you often get what you measure ….especially when the feedback loop is effective

Perhaps as importantly it allows you to SHOW that you are taking control, hopefully giving confidence to people, demonstrates your organisation’s desire for change and ideally creating a model for the right culture. 

Here is how you can find out more

Visit www.iwizardsolutions.com/covid19

Ask us at info.eu@iwizardsolutions.com

Computer Vision: Enhancing Industrial Safety with AI

by Apoorva Verma

The AI revolution is here.

As artificial intelligence increasingly gains prominence, several sub-domains such as computer vision, machine learning, deep learning, internet of things, and analytics are some of the technologies that have propelled growth.

Out of these, computer vision is one of those technologies that enable the interpretation and understanding of the visual world for machines. With the help of digital images and deep learning models, computers react to what they 'see' by identifying and classifying objects. In fact, accuracy rates in recognising and responding to visual inputs for the technology has risen from 50% to 99% over the past decade. This means that such solutions could become indispensable for a range of applications across industries.

However, our focus of discussion is the use of computer vision technology in manufacturing, which now have the necessary means to achieve automated safety compliance.

A Computer vision solution, such as the IRIS, developed by Integration Wizards, to work with an existing CCTV network, would serve as an advanced and effective replica of the human eyes, with the added ability to identify and classify different objects or situations, and react accordingly, such as in the form of alerts.

For instance, the AI-powered solution ensures workforce safety compliance by identifying workers without prerequisite safety equipment or protective gear such as hardhats, visibility vests, etc. This results in an appropriate response, like sending a real-time notification to the safety manager. The solution also maintains a database of safety protocol breaches which would be useful in investigations of any workplace accidents as well as take a step towards preventing accidents.

The application of the solution further extends from safety gear detection to occurrence of serious incidents such as the detection of fire and electrical malfunction, machine malfunction, trespassing or unauthorised access to hazardous areas, etc.

Efficient response trigged from the system in such scenarios aids in preventing serious losses to the workers as well as the manufacturing plant. Thus, it detects any anomalies that are not in accordance with the standard operating procedures. Real-time alerts and fail-safe measures accelerate the resolution of the issue.

The application of the solution can further encompass operational safety compliance. This would include material safety, such as the multi-object detection through computer vision, with automatic scanners on production lines, etc. In addition, it would identify any faults with raw materials that may be too small for the human eye but could prove detrimental for the final product.

In high performing manufacturing plants, compliance with safety regulations becomes the utmost priority. In fact, components falling off the production line must also adhere to safety guidelines.

Ultimately, the pressure of delivering high quality, efficient and time-sensitive results at manufacturing premises, together with the use of heavy machinery, potentially dangerous equipment, and the possibility of human error, make such sites prone to oversight of safety compliance, and by extension, workplace accidents.

Such unique innovative solutions can ensure safety compliance across the workforce as well as the entire manufacturing process and facility.