A well-managed manufacturing yard is essential to a thriving manufacturing enterprise. Data is key to the optimization of yard operations, but data lacking insight can cause manufacturing blind spots that prove detrimental to yard safety.
Access to realtime data delivering actionable insight is critical to ensuring the safe interaction between people, equipment, vehicles, and materials in the manufacturing yard.
Improving Manufacturing Yard Safety With Realtime Data And Industry 4.0 Technology
The sheer size of some manufacturing yards can make it difficult to maintain visibility over every aspect, even with a wide range of data being collected from multiple sources such as equipment operators, IIoT sensors, machine tools (alarms, statuses, overrides), and connected systems like enterprise resource planning (ERP), or manufacturing execution systems (MES). Big data analysis can very well be applied to data from these sources, but it often lacks the context and insight necessary to show how all these operational moving parts fit together — and manufacturing yard safety can suffer as a result.
Industry 4.0 technologies solve for these data challenges. Advanced computer vision using deep learning algorithms can expose blind spots and convert data into actionable intelligence. Moving well beyond traditional security methods, artificial intelligence (AI) can leverage historical data and insights to issue alerts around potential safety hazards.
Those aforementioned many moving parts throughout a manufacturing yard carry with them possibilities for much to go awry. Computer vision utilizes low-cost cameras feeding imagery into machine learning and AI programs running on edge computers. AI can analyze video images from across the yard, learning to watch for employee lapses like safety halo violations, forklifts in danger zones, improperly stored materials, or failure to wear the proper personal protective equipment, and can then identify best practices and alert workers to hazards they might be unaware of, in real time.
AI and continuous monitoring can also alert yard managers of potential accidents before they happen. A visual stream of data delivers actionable intelligence in the same moment it’s captured, allowing for immediate intervention and resolution.
Actionable intelligence allows manufacturers to understand their manufacturing yard data in realtime to mitigate safety issues, leading to a substantial reduction in accidents and injuries and an improvement in material flows.
The safest manufacturing yard is one automated with realtime, digital feedback, gathered automatically and displayed simultaneously. Previously unseen blind spots come to light, reducing risk and cost — a high priority for businesses. Leveraging realtime data with Industry 4.0 technology allows manufacturers to identify the specific risks around their manufacturing yard and then adjust procedures for both immediate and long-term advantages.
A Manufacturing Yard Safety Solution That Gives You The Full Picture
With enhanced visibility into human activity, and a more global view of yard, factory and warehouse operations, safety issues can be efficiently and successfully mitigated.
ThinkIQ’s Yard Operations Solution gives you the full picture — by measuring both machines and equipment (utilization) & people (efficiency), safety is enhanced and true productivity is captured for the first time.
ThinkIQ’s Yard Operations software delivers realtime reporting on critical activities and events in the manufacturing yard. With ThinkIQ, decision makers have access to actionable intelligence based on this realtime data, enabling them to take immediate action to correct safety and operational issues. This ability to act decisively and quickly ensures the mitigation of risk to workers, the security of the manufacturing yard, and the maximization of productivity.
How it works:
- Instrument: Non-invasive ThinkIQ sensors are rapidly installed. No retrofit necessary and it’s adaptable to any vintage machine.
- Analyze: ThinkIQ captures the data to our cloud, feeds the artificial intelligence pipeline, and translates your physical operations into analytical data.
- Action: ThinkIQ delivers realtime feedback of actionable intelligence to understand and act upon.
ThinkIQ solutions provide the realtime data you need to improve manufacturing yard and plant floor safety, offering an advanced upgrade over “Management by Walking Around” methods. Our customers typically discover impactful insights and benefits almost immediately. Improve the safety in your manufacturing yard today — A ThinkIQ expert is standing by to help you bring the right context to your data, exposing blind spots and enhancing yard operations. You can also download our new eBook, “Using Computer Vision to Fill Manufacturing and Warehousing Blind Spots with Actionable Data” to learn more about how to gain greater visibility into your manufacturing process.
