North Star BlueScope Steel applied cognitive technologies in labor protection

On July 6, 2016 the IBM company announced plans of use of cognitive technology of Internet of Things of Watson Internet of Things (IoT) in North Star BlueScope Steel company.

Project Tasks

The North Star BlueScope Steel company is going to use also portable devices for creation of the innovative solutions on protection of the workers acting in extreme conditions.

The research project in the field of health and safety of staff of IBM Employee Wellness and Safety Solution will process the data arriving from portable devices of employees. At emergence of conditions, potentially dangerous to the person, the technology will transfer these data in real time to the management of customer company.

Command center production, (2015)

The employees working in extreme conditions are exposed every day to different risks, including influence of high temperatures, toxic gases, naked flame and incidents with the heavy machine equipment. According to the index of security Liberty Mutual Research Institute 2014 Workplace Safety Index, costs for payment of a compensation packet to the American workers at physical overworks and falling exceed $25 billion a year. At the same time still there are no practical methods of verification of mandatory requirements of security and the personal protective equipment applied in potentially dangerous conditions. In 2014 nearly 3 million industrial injuries without death are registered.

In the project it is supposed to use portable touch devices, like fitness trackers. IBM developed by scientists in the city of Haifa the platform allows to use cognitive calculations over the data arriving at once from several touch devices. Such opportunity allows to make the complex analysis and to help the organizations to reveal, identify dangerous situations. For example, the company can receive a combination of data on body temperature, the speeded-up pulse and immovability within several minutes that can indicate thermal shock with a possible lethal outcome. Similar indicators out of interrelation with each other can seem insignificant.

The majority of incidents on production can be prevented, or thanks to proper use of protective equipment, or using coordination of temporary or space constraints in dangerous situations. Our vision of "smart" safety of the worker includes processing and bringing to the management of contextual information which we receive from a large number of touch devices. It is a remote and contactless method which works continuously and considers external factors of the environment. It timely provides crucial information to employees when it is necessary. Gaby Zodik, director of IoT and Mobile Platforms of research division of IBM Research

Within this research project North Star for the first time uses the solution of IBM Employee Wellness and Safety Solution for identification of potentially dangerous working conditions. This tool collects information from different touch devices which constantly trace the body temperature of workers, their pulse, a skin and galvanic reflex, level of activity and correlates them to data on air temperature and level of humidity.

The program warns managers of North Star about dangerous situations that they could provide the personalized recommendations about security to each employee. The same technology can be applied to collection of data on intensive influence of different temperatures, radiation level, noise or concentration of toxic gases, thanks to the device for temperature measurement, humidity, noise or light. In particular, availability of noxious gases can be detected using personal sensors which work with Wi-Fi or Bluetooth on energy saving touch devices.

Thanks to IBM Employee Wellness and Safety Solution we increased awareness on thermal shock and overloads among our test users. The solution showed how data can move from the user to the IBM Watson IoT Platform platform and then to the manager. After end of a development stage, it will help to increase safety of workers including using capability of monitoring of the environment in real time. Malkolm Ej, Chief information officer of North Star BlueScope Steel