Safety is not the opposite of efficiency. There are numerous sources of danger in the chemical industry. Occupational health and safety are therefore essential factors for an efficient and productive workforce. The new EGOpro Manager 4.0 platform from Advanced Microwave Engineering (AME), a pioneer in future-proof safety technology, takes a completely new approach to safety in chemical and pharmaceutical plants by evaluating efficiency, productivity and safety measures to arrive at a single metric of operational performance.
Processes in a chemical plant can threaten lives if proper safety precautions are not taken. The new EGOpro Manager 4.0 represents an evolution in safety measurement. Rather than simply assessing the potential risk of an accident, this new platform considers all aspects of vehicle movement throughout the chemical and pharmaceutical plant, capturing all data and displaying it on a clear dashboard. The software logs the approach of other vehicles and pedestrians, safety-related stops, the number of vehicles and pedestrians in a given area, and the speeds and distances traveled by vehicles. It is also able to produce a detailed analysis report that compares the performance of all of a company's operations and associated vehicles, using various criteria such as day of the week, time of day, speed and operator. The result is a clear, real-time status picture of the operation in terms of safety and work efficiency.
Identifying and evaluating potential risks in a chemical plant and putting precautionary measures in place is critical to workplace safety. The new EGOpro Manager generates an Efficiency Safety Indicator (ESI), essentially a combination of efficiency and safety metrics. This single value provides a summary of the combined safety and efficiency performance of the plant, broken down by vehicle, fleet or area. In addition to this real-time indicator, historical data forms the basis for analysis and trends. This reveals patterns and areas where strategic adjustments can be made to improve both safety and efficiency.
Filippo Bonifacio, CEO and co-founder of AME, explains: "This is the first solution on the market that brings together safety and efficiency. These factors do not necessarily have to be diametrically opposed. When we measure and monitor both, chemical and pharmaceutical plants operate firstly safely and secondly quickly."
Within a chemical plant, the EGOpro Manager 4.0 platform communicates with EGOpro Safe Move Smart devices on the vehicles and small wearable tags for pedestrians. Both use ultra-wideband (UWB) technology to transmit positions and movements throughout the plant in real time. Each device has its own transponder so that position information is always up to date system-wide.
Bonifacio concludes: "The future of safety is clearly not about containing the impact of an incident or sacrificing efficiency in terms of speed of operation. Rather, it's about taking proactive measures to maintain workplace safety, detecting potential hazards and adapting strategies accordingly, and optimizing the speed of work without taking risks. EGOpro Manager 4.0 takes operational safety and efficiency to a new level."
