Location monitoring technology is part of some manufacturers’ and producers’ safety programs. In the event of a safety incident, this technology enables the safety management team to know which people are in the affected area and which are not.
The Location Awareness system provides you with relevant-time, safety-focused monitoring of your most valued resource – your people. Enabled by WirelessHART Anchors and battery-operated Location Tags, our Location Awareness system is less than half the investment of existing Wi-Fi location systems.
In a Safety Solutions article, Improve plant safety with location monitoring technology, Emerson’s Bala Chinnappan shares another use case, tracking the path of individuals that have tested positive for infectious diseases, such as COVID.
Bala opens by highlighting the importance of safety guidelines.
Following established safety guidelines is one thing, but what if personnel contract the virus? In that case it becomes vital to know their movements from before they became symptomatic, as they would have been contagious and could have spread the virus to others in the plant. Production goals won’t be met when too many employees are out sick.
Having an awareness of where and how long people are congregating is essential.
Knowing the location and how much time is spent where is valuable data, which can help develop employee scheduling patterns that reduce risks such as virus transmissions or potentially hazardous clustering of people doing routine work or maintenance.
Bala shares an example of how one company is using location monitoring.
At the Middle East facility of a global oil and gas company, the challenge of location monitoring was primarily around contractors who were widely employed in one area of the facility. Scheduling these contractors was challenging because they were only allowed onsite if accompanied by an employee. Using the location monitoring tags, the facility could automate safety mustering, add geofencing to hazardous areas and provide safety alerts. The facility plans to add its permit system by automating issuance and closure. Once data from this first implementation is evaluated, the company plans to deploy the system at other sites, including remote well site locations.
Read the article for more ways to drive personnel safety improvements at your locations using location monitoring technology. Visit the Industrial Wireless Technology section and Location Awareness page on Emerson.com for more on the range of wireless solutions to drive improvements in your safety program.
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