Monitoring safety and security risks are
everyday responsibilities for modern industrial facilities. With so many things
that can go wrong, plant operators
must take steps to digitize, integrate and automate their environmental, health
and safety (EHS) ecosystem. Integrating the right safety and security solutions, is
instrumental in preparing the organization to accurately identify and address
critical safety risks—whenever and wherever they arise.
Background
In today’s global industrial market,
investments in EHS solutions are mandatory to ensure plant assets are protected
and personnel are provided a safe work environment. Industrial facilities must meet
all applicable government and industry standards while maintaining continuous
safety improvement.
Unfortunately, the expertise to assess
vulnerabilities and mitigate known risks may not be available in-house, and current
practices in this area can be inconsistent and ineffective.
Demands
on Industrial Facilities
In industries such as oil & gas, petrochemicals
and power generation, plants strive for peak performance while staying within
safe operating boundaries. However, the lack of real-time visibility of the
process, advanced analytics for data, and an automated response system makes
operators vulnerable to errors, putting plant, personnel and environment at
stake, not to mention reputation.
Safety and security incidents cost process plant operators $10 billion USD
annually. More than $2 billion in claims are reported to
insurance companies due to equipment damage, and $12 million is lost due to fires or explosions,
on average, each year.
Faced with this reality, improved EHS initiatives take on critical importance. A study by LNS research shows 64% of industrial companies have either already started digitalization initiatives related to EHS, or plan to do so in the near future.
“integrating the right safety and security solutions, is instrumental in preparing the organization to accurately identify and address critical safety risks”
Strategy
for Improved Safety
For industrial organizations, particularly
those in fast-growing operating regions such as the Middle East, compliance is
only part of the journey towards safety excellence. They must look beyond
“incident numbers” and “zero accident goals” to achieve utmost safety performance
in a true sense. This requires a strong commitment to:
- Establishing a culture or
behavior driven from the top that shows complete support for achievable safety
initiatives.
- Understanding risk management
processes, procedures, and standards to identify, prioritize and mitigate
risks.
- Investing in the right
technologies that improve safety and productivity.
Taking
an Integrated Approach
In the move to digital transformation, plant
owners/operators seek to accurately capture, analyze and transmit data for
greater safety and productivity across the enterprise. While digitization can
help with these goals, it can be difficult for manufacturers to do on their own.
One solution is to select a partner that understands the industrial paradigm
and can develop a step-by-step process for digitization that involves:
- Developing a cohesive safety
strategy
- Understanding safety is not a
cost, but an investment that protects workers
- Knowing safety will improve
productivity and streamline processes
- Allowing visibility into the
safety process to make real-time decisions
- Expanding automation to drive
real time deployment of policies to the work face
As a leading global industrial technology supplier,
Honeywell provides plant and personnel safety solutions that digitize, integrate
and automate the entire scope of industrial health and safety. The innovative,
end-to-end offering includes comprehensive, integrated products for safety
shutdown, fire & gas, physical/cyber security, personnel protection, and
alarm/emergency response management. Honeywell’s approach enables plant
operators to deploy independent, yet interrelated layers of protection to
prevent, detect, and mitigate potential safety and security risks.
With Honeywell’s solutions, it is possible to
tie together all aspects of safety by seamlessly connecting the safety
lifecycle of the plant, personnel and process in one system, which makes for a
more cohesive view of the entire safety enterprise. The use of centralized and
synchronized data eliminates errors and inconsistencies for the entire
manufacturing enterprise. This approach also results in higher quality performance,
utilizing fewer resources to improve productivity of expensive and/or scarce
design resources. Monitoring performance by using data from the historian to
validate designs or flag issues offers an up-to-date real time risk dashboard.
Benefits
for Plant Operators
Experience across the
industrial market shows digitized safety reduces risk.In a more robust digital environment, plant
operators can view safety risks in real time, allowing them to predictively
identify vulnerabilities and address problems before any downtime, or incident,
occurs.
A top-tier safety organization has fewer
injuries, and is more productive and profitable. Such an organization
experiences fewer unusual, or unwanted, shutdowns. It also implements maintenance
regimens that are preventive and proactive. Digital safety solutions are a
viable investment with a strong return on investment (ROI).
Overall, the benefits of digitization in plant
and personnel safety include:
- Increased overall equipment
effectiveness (OEE)
- Lower repeat accident and
injury frequency rates
- Increased situational
awareness
- Improve decision-making for
faster response to incidents
- Less unscheduled asset
downtime
A comprehensive approach like Honeywell’s,
which integrates all or portions of independent safety systems, can yield
efficiency gains and operational improvement, as well as improve compliance and
risk mitigation efforts across various disciplines.
Conclusion
There is little question that industrial
operations are at their most productive when EHS performance is optimized. To
this end, a growing number of industrial organizations have embarked on a
digitization journey to address current operational demands, a constantly
shifting regulatory landscape, and the emergence of new risks to plant and
personnel wellbeing.
Proven suppliers like
Honeywell couple best-in-class solutions with global expertise to ensure a safe
and reliable path to digitization. Honeywell’s strategy, proven at industrial
sites worldwide, relies on the ability to automate and seamlessly connect the entire
safety lifecycle into a single, effective system that drives safety excellence.To find out more visit us at: https://hwll.co/PlantPersonnelSafety