Convergence of Smart Safety Solutions Increases Productivity and Operational Resilience

Keywords: Smart Safety Solution Convergence, Productivity, Digital Transformation, AI, ROA, ROI, Operational Resilience, Supply Chain, IT, OT, ET, PLC, Edge

Overview

Issues ranging from fluctuating tariffs to supply chain uncertainties, to global geopolitical crises have quite possibly challenged and changed industry more abruptly than at any other time in modern history.  This has drastically impacted the need for manufacturers and processors to accelerate their digital transformation journey from years to weeks in order to respond in real time to  abrupt market changes and become more agile, productive, and operationally resilient, which is the only way that companies can survive and thrive today.

Manufacturers and processors today struggle to manage their production in an environment where their ability to plan is hindered and the only certainty is uncertainty. These companies need to leverage tools, such as artificial intelligence (AI) to help solve these challenges. Digital transformation has accelerated the ability for physical and organizational boundaries to be broken to engage and connect teams, and drive collaboration between information technology (IT), operations technology (OT), and engineering technology (ET). There are new methodologies and technologies required, driven by the need to monitor and protect against failures, ensure product fulfillment and high productivity, protect personnel, and do all this while leveraging enhanced safety and security architectures. This digital transformation acceleration is driving the demand for smart safety solutions, which are now an essential component of a manufacturer’s and processor’s operational resilience strategy and a key enabler of achieving the productivity required to thrive in today’s challenging times.  

Convergence of Smart Safety Solutions Increases Productivity

There is no question that the digital transformation journey requires end users and OEMs to obtain much more production and machine information, which means that more industrial components need to have the ability to collect production operations or machine data, process that data into meaningful information, and send that information to the edge, to a control system, a cloud, or some combination of those options. Add the convergence of smart technologies with digital transformation, such as generative AI using large-language models to convey information to a less experienced and smaller work force, or using agentic AI to make decisions. The convergence of smart technologies has led to the development of smart safety solutions that have these built-in capabilities to help production lines and machines to be more secure, productive and information-enabled to increase production efficiencies and decrease unscheduled downtime, while enhancing safety and operational resilience.

Safety continues to increase its importance for manufacturers and processors, especially when these companies discover how safety helps to provide a competitive advantage rather than solely an increase in costs. Besides minimizing risks, increased safety helps these companies to improve productivity and profitability by reducing unscheduled downtime and increasing Overall Equipment Efficiency (OEE) and Return on Assets (ROA). In addition to helping to protect workers from injuries or potential life threatening situations, such as cutting power while clearing a jammed machine, opening a high voltage machine or panel, or entering a work cell, the time saved by not having to, for example, continuously use the e-stop buttons to resolve machine jamming situations greatly minimizes the frequency and duration of unscheduled downtimes, increasing productivity and providing a quick Return on Investment (ROI).

Integrating safety to leverage the full capabilities and benefits of smart devices, such as gathering and processing data in real time at or close to the point that the data is gathered, but still able to leverage all safety functionality, represents a convergence of these technologies. Just as companies are seeing their IT, OT and ET functionalities converge, these devices used in processing and manufacturing applications are seeing their safety and smart devices converging for the benefit of persons who install, program, operate, and service the automation equipment, such as Edge, PLCs, PACs, drives and sensors, as well as the manufacturing assets, such as machinery, material handling equipment, pumps, conveyers, ovens, batch reactors, etc. This not only makes these assets safer to operate, but also provides valuable insight as to what is occurring, since the smart devices are designed to gather key data that can be analyzed and leveraged to make the overall production process safer, more efficient, productive, and profitable.

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