Putting the connected worker at the heart of the organization’s digital strategy has become a differentiator and a driver of innovation and growth. For organizations looking to establish agile and adaptable workforces at a time when markets are volatile and circumstances uncertain, connected worker technology both empowers and enables people to do more and go further. It refines operational capabilities and embeds excellence within the business and its operations, and it reshapes the risk conversation.
How? Well, there are several factors that combine to drive data-driven decision making within heavy industry:
- Dynamic risk management
- Real-time alerts and insights
- Data-driven insights and analytics capabilities
- A visualized command center with coherent access to all information and that delivers information in real time
- The connected worker and intelligent engagements
- Autonomous system management with proactive and predictive capabilities
- AI, IoT and ML capabilities
Dynamic risk management
Dynamic risk management should be an integral part of achieving operational excellence – strategically and functionally. It should also be informed by data-driven decision making that tugs on the insights and data provided throughout the digital, connected, ecosystem. This runs from the connected worker through IoT and Industrial IoT (IIoT) sensors and systems to analytics with a real-time visual view in a centralized command center.
By pulling together every one of these touchpoints, organizations are creating an autonomous and intelligent dashboard – a brain that ensures the right people have the right information at the right time. It’s an AI-assisted platform that connects humans, machines and systems to deliver operational excellence consistently, and to assist in driving the optimization of factory and field performance with relevant information and insights in real-time.
This radical reimagining of operational reality is a far more effective way of visualizing and dynamically managing work activities and risk. It connects people and brings disparate data from systems, sensors and human-derived activities together to deliver meaningful, actionable insights across the organization.
The Connected Conversation
Perhaps one of the strongest threads that ties the multiple threads around dynamic risk management together is that of the connected worker. This is a powerful and invaluable tool for the modern organization and it is one, according to Verdantix, that has gained significant traction over the past few years. Connected worker solutions allow for industrial organizations to empower workers to achieve more within tighter restrictions, without compromising on security or productivity. Perhaps even more significantly, 79% of those surveyed found that connected worker solutions were a significant driver of operational excellence.
The reality is that operational environments, whether they are leveraging the capabilities of operational excellence and digital functionality or not, have become increasingly reliant on connectivity and insights to run efficiently. Investment into connected worker platforms allows for organizations to integrate information, systems and operational data more efficiently which results in safer working environments and improved overall productivity.
“The connected worker, integrated into the workplace environment by advanced networking technologies, is the human representation of digital transformation, interpreting networked data inputs collected from across an organizational grid to provide context, insight, and guidance that improves decision-making across the value chain: optimizing assembly-line operations, making inventory-adjustment decisions, fine-tuning heavy machinery.” – Harvard Business Review. Digital Transformation is Incomplete Without the Connected Worker.
The connected worker is a digital view of all facility activities that can be accessed by workers and decision makers to improve personal and process safety. Designed with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies, the modern connected worker platform provides the organization with access to real time information that can be used to promote safe behavior and improve worker engagement. It also plays a significant role in risk mitigation strategies and in ensuring operational excellence if partnered with dynamic risk management.
So how does it work? Find out in our next blog!
