HEALTH & SAFETY
freezers that will regularly check and record the temperatures and generate daily and weekly reports. An automated solution not only improves safety standards by enabling monitoring at frequent intervals, but it can reduce the staffing needed and can help alert staff to fridge breakdowns in real time to reduce wastage. Monitoring other parameters such as power and energy readings can help predict early risk of machine failure and reduce energy consumption, which can lead to valuable cost savings. Additionally, over-chilling certain foods can affect quality, leading to issues such as watery yoghurt in supermarket fridges. So, by ensuring that food contents are stored at correct temperatures, product quality – and therefore customer satisfaction – can be improved and maintained. Within the warehousing industry, racking
vibrations can be monitored automatically through IoT sensors to help detect when and where racks are hit and/or compromised to help to reduce the need to manually check all the racks. With this monitoring in place, the ability to immediately respond to these incidents also improves forklift drivers’, and other workers’, awareness and care in these scenarios. Effective monitoring in place also results in driving more targeted tasks for those involved in managing the problem, and a reduction in the labour and time costs associated with this. Further, it means that issues can be detected that wouldn’t necessarily be spotted by a visual inspection alone, so problems can be identified and fixed before they escalate. In education, hospitality and office
environments, a typical monitoring challenge is knowing whether the workspace is ventilated enough to reduce the risk of infections like COVID spreading and be
deemed safe for use. CO2 monitoring equipment can measure levels within the space, however to get accurate readings the measuring equipment needs to be in the right place and the readings need to be taken and recorded over a time period. Certain factors
will affect CO2 levels, for example the number of people within the room and of course how much fresh air is coming in from opened windows and ventilation systems. Without the aid of technology, regularly checking these levels and noting down readings is hugely time consuming and consequently it is likely people would miss
when the CO2 levels become too high. Automating the process ensures readings are taken and recorded regularly making it far easier to manage ventilation, and should levels hit a certain threshold, designated team members can be alerted immediately to take action such as open windows or turn on ventilation systems. Another factor to consider is that some organisations might just opt for handheld
CO2 monitors. This approach is not effective as CO2 levels develop over time, based on the number of people in a particular area
(e.g. the office). A spot check on ventilation in the morning will not be sufficient to provide useful consistent data through the day. No one would think of walking around with a smoke detector to spot check if there might be a risk of a fire – okay, granted, the risk of
damage to staff and premises is higher from a fire, but the principle is the same. Furthermore, today, sensors are quick and easy to install and do not require any expensive wiring to run, or an overhaul to existing infrastructure. The solutions are cloud based, making it much simpler to leverage, and registered users can also access the data from a secure portal from any web browser, enabling effective senior management oversight, even from a remote location.
OvercOming regulatOry challenges
Businesses should not let staff shortages and old-fashioned manual processes stifle their development, growth or compliance efforts. The pandemic has held many organisations back and had significant impacts on continuity so it is crucial organisations learn from this and evolve in line with new technology capabilities – especially with predictions that machines will be responsible for half of all work tasks by 2025. Automating menial monitoring tasks frees up staff and improves efficiency on a number of levels, allowing staff to focus on much more valuable, skilled tasks. Automated monitoring solutions also act as a failsafe for when staff are off ill or if staff levels need to be reduced, after all, compliance measures are always required and do not change just because staff are unavailable. Ultimately, these solutions can streamline operations, release time within the business, and protect staff, customers and students across a range of industries.
ant telecom
www.anttelecom.co.uk
IndustrIal ComplIanCe | WInter 2021 39
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