Wearable technologies – cameras, tablets and other devices loaded with applications (apps) and software that can be attached to the body or personal protective equipment (PPE) – are catching on in the chemical process industries (CPI) because they provide an efficient way to increase productivity and enhance safety for maintenance technicians and field operators.
While the concept is not new, as wearables have been available for years, the technology has dramatically improved, making them more user-friendly, feature-rich and suitable for hazardous environments than previous iterations, opening avenues for use in a variety of industrial applications. Wearables are being applied to enhance maintenance and operator activities by providing digital libraries of necessary documents and over-the-shoulder coaching, and are improving worker safety by supplying location, health and other information about the wearer in an effort to assist with emergency response, mustering and access control.
“Three factors are making wearable technologies more prevalent today: improved devices, the ability to design end-to-end, integrated solutions and better connectivity options,” explains Tracey Countryman, managing director and global lead for Industry X.0 Digital Manufacturing and Operations at Accenture (London, U.K.). “In the past, the devices were clunky, not suitable for industrial or hazardous environments and were often carried in a heavy metal container that had to be strapped on. However, they’ve come a long way
toward reconciling themselves for the industrial environment. Today’s versions are lightweight, durable and have better enclosures, so they can be certified for use in hazardous environments and are available at a better price point.”
She adds that by leveraging the newest technologies to build more customized, end-to-end integrated software solutions, facilities are able to digitize the entire work process and load it into a device where workers can access documents, instructions, training videos, work orders and the like via apps and voice commands. The third component is connectivity. “Three to four years ago, only a few plants had WiFi, but now more facilities are employing WiFi for pervasive connectivity. Bluetooth is also widely used and 4G and 5G technologies are available at lower costs, making connectivity a much less expensive, more viable and easier-accessed prospect in industry than ever before,” notes Countryman. “These three factors are driving the adoption of wearable technologies for industrial use.”
And, statistics demonstrate the anticipated growth. “The Industry 4.0 market opportunity is currently worth $110 billion by total economic value, with Accenture estimating that the industrial internet of things (IIoT) could impact 46% of the global economy, estimated at $14 trillion, by 2030. In the connected worker space, wearable technology and wearable sensor devices alone is growing at a predicted 13.1% compound annual growth rate and is estimated to reach $4.3 billion in the next 20 years,” says Mark Bernstein, CEO of Wearable Technologies, Ltd. (Leicestershire, UK), quoting from an Accenture Industrial Internet of Things Positioning Paper Report.
More specifically, Accenture’s Countryman, quoting Accenture’s Digital State of the Industry Report, adds that when chemical companies were asked how much they’d invest in mobility/wearables in the next 12 months (from 2018), 77% said they’d invest nothing; however, 16% said they’d invest between 21% and 40%. When asked where digital investment for product and operations will be in the next three years, 24% of the top three chemical companies cited mobility/wearables.
One of the biggest productivity benefits associated with wearables is the ability to not only store, but also to easily access, necessary documents and videos, on demand, in the field.
“During the digital transformation, we aim to provide customers with digital solutions and opportunities using software, hardware and services that improve safety, productivity and collaboration,” says Veronica Turner, business development leader with Honeywell Process Solutions (Houston). “So when we think of field personnel, our Intelligent Wearables – android devices that can be hooked through clips to an industrial hard hat – are an ideal solution. These devices are loaded with software that provides field personnel with the necessary tools, such as forms, P&IDs [piping and instrumentation diagrams] drawings, manuals and libraries of procedures in PDF format, as well as photos and videos, so they can complete tasks more efficiently”
While it does take effort to add data and work instructions to the software in the devices, it is often worth the effort in increased productivity, according to the experts. RealWear’s Jhawar says customers who have done ROI studies often see task time reduced by 40% and error rates reduced by 80%. Likewise, Accenture’s Countryman cites their most recent digitalization project, in which the customer sought to improve productivity and maintenance planning. “They had 10,000 pieces of equipment that were barcoded and an integrated, realtime information system between document management systems, SAP, work orders and all the associated things that needed to come together to do the work,” she says. “After the project, they had 100% compliance with time reporting and they were expecting a 2 to 5% production increase and a 15 to 20% productivity increase. This is in line with what we anticipate for customers who are using wearables for over-the-shoulder coaching and digitizing procedures and other documents.”
Many of the wearable devices contain a camera along with software that allows field personnel to place a call and connect in real time with an expert selected by the user. Experts are typically control-room personnel, maintenance professionals, vendors or call centers, depending upon who is chosen by facility management. The subject matter expert can guide the field worker by “tele-stration,” meaning they can not only see what the field technician is looking at via the camera, but also use the camera to verbally and visually assist the technician by adding drawings, arrows or writing on the image.
“We offer the Onsight Cube EX [Figure 2], which is a wearable camera certified for hazardous areas that, along with the Remote Field Expert software feature enabled, allows a person in the field to initiate a video call so they can communicate directly with tech support on the spot,” explains Justin Olivier, product manager for mobility for the Americas with ecom Instruments, a Pepperl+Fuchs brand (Twinsburg, Ohio).
Wearable technologies also improve safety functions in chemical facilities. “In the industrial markets, there is a growing request for safety products in the wearables realm and for smart PPE, such as technologies for location and access control. In the past, most solutions were extremely expensive to install,” says Amanda Alexander, global product manager with Emerson Automation Solutions (Shakopee, Minn.). “So we created a product for location technology using the WirelessHART infrastructure and it has removed a lot of the cost, while providing necessary safety benefits.”
Many chemical facilities need to maintain fences for access control around hazardous areas and would prefer to have a virtual fence rather than a physical fence. Using Location Tag, they can create a virtual fence and apply certain rules to it. “For instance, if someone is wearing a tag and they do not have permission to enter a particular zone within a facility, an alert will be sent to the appropriate personnel if that person enters that area,” explains Alexander. “This also works within the efficiency realm regarding contractors, as it enables facilities to create zones for the contractors by providing them with tags that allow them entrance into only the accessible areas of the facility.”
The tag can also be used for safety mustering. “Typically the muster zone is a designated area and when there is an emergency or drill, employees report to the zone, find a supervisor or sign into a sheet that is uploaded and recorded later to determine how long it took employees to reach safety. Simplifying the process, Location Tag creates a muster zone with a virtual fence and when tagged employees arrive, they are automatically counted. On the flip side, if someone does not arrive, an alert is sent and the person can be located by emergency responders using the sensor on the tag. In addition, there is a button on each tag that can be pressed in the event of emergency or injury to send an alert over the user interface.”
Wearable Technologies, too, is using wearables to keep industrial workers safer by delivering data-led, actionable insights in real time to site managers and health and safety managers. “We are delivering big data relating to workers, to the data lakes already holding other types of data such as plant and weather data to facilitate the application of artificial intelligence across the large enterprise,” says Bernstein. The company’s Eleksen Connected Worker Solution (Figure 4) provides the ability to monitor industrial workforces to improve safety and increase productivity by linking smart garments to a choice of personal sensor devices, such as for gas, noise and physiology, to a reporting dashboard that enables managers to monitor the conditions of their workforce in the field and onsite in real time, helping mitigate risk, reduce costs and improve performance.
As wearable technologies continue to improve, they will become an extension of Industry 4.0, connecting not just plant data and analytics, but that of worker productivity and safety, as well. “If you think of sensors as instrumenting the plant itself, it’s not a great leap to think of them as instrumenting the humans operating the plant. And, if you can combine IoT from humans and IoT from the plant, then you will have a complete picture of your operations,” says RealWear’s Jhawar (Figure 5). “This is important because the maintenance and reliability performance of the manufacturing operation depends upon how well the field technicians maintain the assets, as well as their safety. At the end of the day, it’s all about the effectiveness and efficiency of how the people in the field interact with the assets that gets processors to best-in-class operating performance. Wearables are all about helping individuals be the best version they can be because they have access to best-in-class knowledge at all times.”
