Forrester has found that organizations within the heavy industry sector are increasingly turning to digital solutions to resolve challenges around productivity, operational efficiency, and asset availability. The research firm defines this drive towards digital operational excellence (DOX) as both strategic and transformative. It allows companies to fully realize their potential and overcome traditionally complex operational issues for long-term measurable value.
This can be achieved by using some of the truly innovative technological capabilities that have emerged over the past few years.
Technologies that allow for organizations to fully access and analyze their data and derive insights, using these to create cohesive ecosystems that can adapt and evolve alongside changing markets and business requirements. The data-based analysis and insights are crucial to keep up with rapid changes and allow for sustainable improvements in operational capability and risk management.
Connecting People
One of the strongest elements of operational excellence is the connected worker.
Connected worker platforms are digital software tools that help improve the way humans work in industrial settings. These tools are combined with mobile and wearable devices and used to improve communication, collaboration, guidance, and support in complex industrial scenarios, including manufacturing, construction, energy, mining, and maritime
According to Verdantix, this concept has become increasingly relevant over the past few years as it allows industrial organizations to empower workers to achieve more within tighter restrictions. And it does so without compromising on security or productivity. Their survey also found that 79% of respondents felt that connected worker solutions were a significant driver of operational excellence.
The connected worker provides the organization with a comprehensive digital view of all facility activities. These can be accessed by workers and decision-makers to improve processes and personnel safety. The solution uses artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and real-time information to promote safe behavior and improve engagement. Connected worker platforms also play a significant role in risk mitigation when partnered with dynamic risk management.
(Find out How Machine Learning Will Reduce Workplace Accidents)
Dynamic risk management solutions use artificial intelligence and machine learning to identify and monitor predictive and prescriptive metrics, delivering dynamic reports based on real-time analytics.
These platforms can revolutionize occupational safety while allowing organizations to leverage data to improve operations and translate insights into value. It also contributes significantly towards data-driven decision-making.
The Heart of Your Strategy
Putting the connected worker at the heart of your organization’s digital strategy is a differentiator. It drives innovation and growth. It allows for your organization to establish an agile and adaptable workforce at a time when markets are volatile and circumstances uncertain. It empowers and enables people to do more within safe environments. It’s a powerful ally for organizations looking to refine operational capabilities and completely redefine their risk conversations because it has access to relevant data and to insights that allow for data-driven decision-making.
Data-driven decision-making allows for the organization to tap into a bouquet of services and solutions that can change its risk profile and operational success story. These include:
- Dynamic risk management
- Real-time alerts and insights
- Data-driven insights and analytics capabilities
- A centralized system with coherent access to all real-time information
- The connected worker and motivated engagements
- Efficient E-Shift management
- Autonomous system management with proactive and predictive capabilities
- AI, Internet of Things (IoT), and ML capabilities
These tools help organizations refine their approaches and embed operational excellence into every action, system, and touchpoint.
Dynamic Risk Management Unpacked
Dynamic risk management should be an integral part of an organization. It plays both a strategic and functional role, informed by data, powered by insights, and fueled by digital systems. It runs from the connected worker through the Internet of Things, industrial IoT (IIoT), sensors, shift management systems, and analytics, building a comprehensive picture of the organization's risk profile. As it aggregates all the safety and operations activities, dynamic risk management allows for the organization to create an autonomous and intelligent dashboard that ensures the right people have the right information at the right time.
AI-assisted platforms connect humans, machines, and systems in real-time and assists in driving the optimization of factory and field performance with relevant information and insights. It’s a radical reimagining of operations that’s far more effective and intelligent, dynamically managing work activities and risk at speed and within the right operational frameworks.
There are other benefits to dynamic risk management. Ones that allow for organizations to refine procedures and processes and establish a more proactive stance throughout. These include:
- Standardization of the work processes across business units, facilities, and regions.
- Strategic, real-time reporting – reveals crucial information that allows decision-makers to identify pain points and drive improvements in company asset and safety management.
- Personalized and visualized business reports and insights customized for every role in the company.
- A risk model that includes data about the worker, location, time of day, weather, tools, and materials. It proactively prevents events that threaten worker lives or create production failures and can deliver a personalized safety routine that guides the performance of people, tasks, and assets.
- A permit to work (E-PTW) digital tool that’s highly agile and adaptable to ensure worker safety and measurable risk reductions in hazardous or non-standard working conditions.
- Connections to siloed data that detect risks to asset reliability and availability.
- Risk-based inspections based on exceptions and deviations that may lead to measurable loss profit opportunities.
- Deploying dynamic operator rounds based on asset health and safety performance data including anomalies and corrective actions can fundamentally change the risk profile.
Put the Human at the Center of the Work
A connected worker platform puts the human in the center and integrates with process sensors, IoT devices, ERP systems, and other work management systems. It’s about bringing data to the forefront of the operation to help organizations better manage their quality, asset availability, and asset performance.