‘Industry 4.0’, the name given to the emerging use of a suite of technologies across many industry sectors, is revolutionising industrial operations in workplaces. Definitions of industry 4.0 technologies often refer to the concept of cyber-physical systems. These are essentially networked integrations of complex physical plant and machinery, sensors and software that communicate and share data wirelessly via the internet.
Industry 4.0 comprises both ‘enabling’ technologies and ‘actioning’ technologies. Examples of enabling technologies include enterprise IT systems, cloud computing, wireless internet, advanced algorithms, virtual and augmented reality, smart sensor networks, wearables, positioning and smart mobile devices.
Actioning technologies are those able to deliver specific tasks, whether physical or cognitive, such as robots, cobots, exoskeletons, 3D printers, process control systems, autonomous vehicles, aerial drones, intelligent agents and expert systems.
Used collectively, these technologies are transforming how workers, equipment and processes interact in industrial workplaces. They are enhancing the delivery of complex process operations through the seamless, end-to-end completion of the individual component tasks that make them up.
Previously, delivery of such tasks would have been reliant on a significant human and often manual component. In the era of industry 4.0, such tasks are technologically supported and often fully automated.
Aims and objectives
Capitalising on the opportunities to improve health and safety practice and dealing with the practical challenges of doing so provide the focus of this feasibility study. The overarching aim of the study is to identify and clearly define research opportunities for the wider Discovering Safety Programme to support that will promote the deployment of industry 4.0 technologies for the betterment of health and safety practice. Specific objectives are to identify:
- key technology areas where the potential to impact on health and safety practice is the greatest
- key barriers to effective deployment of technologies in such contexts
- potential practical solutions to address them
Given the data-centric scope of the Discovering Safety Programme, this study is particularly interested in opportunities that could be exploited and challenges that could be addressed through intelligent use of data, coupled with the exploitation of the data analytic expertise available to the Programme.
Industry 4.0 technologies offer major opportunities for delivering step change improvements in health and safety performance across industrial workplaces, particularly if the challenges associated with their effective deployment can be addressed. The aim of this feasibility study is looking to help characterise such challenges and help shape the development of effective solutions.
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Key Findings
A broad analysis of the overall on-line survey entries is presented in Table 1. It shows that 26.4% of entries report using, or planning to use, network sensors in their organisation, while only 11.6% report using, or planning to use, video analytics. 73.2 % of those reporting using (or planning to use) wearables, do so for health and safety applications while only 45.6% of those using networked sensors do so for health and safety applications. Maintenance is the main application for using networked sensors (50.9% of user) and positioning technologies (62.5% of users). Health and safety is reported as the main application for those using wearables (73.2 % of users), drones and autonomous vehicles (58.1% of users), advanced analytics (53.3% of users), including video analytics (48% of users).
When considering the use of these technologies for health and safety, the top two cited data challenges as indicated in the survey relate to data governance and data auctioning.
Data governance is cited more often than any other challenges listed for each technology surveyed.
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