Safety First – Spectades Safety Blueprint

Safety first is in the DNA of most companies. This is certainly true when it comes to the management and maintenance of assets, whatever the type or size of the assets, and whether they are large, small, simple, or complex. At Spectades, we ensure that the Infor EAM software is used in the right way in which Safety First is the basic principle. Digitalization enables us to add “convenience” as a feature. It is not easy to sum up “safety” and “convenience”, but we successfully achieve both of these. In this article, we will explain how this was successfully implemented by using one of our clients as an example. Do you want to know more about the Safety Blueprint? Download our free whitepaper

It sounds interesting, but how does it work?

The Infor EAM software enables us to connect “safety” and “convenience”. We will begin by explaining the most frequently occurring and important terms.

Asset (management)

Whether it is large, small, simple, or complex, each asset needs to be considered and it needs to be established how the asset is managed within a process. A process may have only two steps, while a chain of assets can have dozens of steps, namely, the complete management of the asset, including investments and safety.

LOTO

This term occurs frequently in processes involving maintenance. LockOut/TagOut (LOTO) guarantees that hazardous equipment and machines are switched off safely, and that they are not switched on until the maintenance is complete. LOTO also ensures that no power source can be activated in any way that may re-engage the process so that the maintenance work can be started. The name LOTO is due to the use of a tag with the lock. If is not possible to shut off the equipment, then only a tag is hung on it.

Permit to work

We will restrict this explanation to the time sheet, the work order, or the permit to start the work. In practice, there are naturally many variants and variables, however, this is sufficient in this context.

Convenience

Convenience is a fairly broad concept. For the purposes of this explanation, it means digital working or processing, mobile working, and all of the associated positive consequences. Examples of this include reducing the overhead, paperless working, and real-time insights.

In practice

We added convenience and digitalization to the work process of one of our clients. For this client, safety is not only a hygiene factor, but they also have a large counter on the wall that keeps track of the number of days without an accident at work. Therefore, safety is at the top of their list of priorities.

Work area

The client who we mentioned as an example in this white paper is a waste processing plant with large furnaces. As you can imagine in a company one of this type, there are strict safety requirements in place, and these are recorded in processes. We made a large number of improvements for the maintenance.

Results

Maintenance of large furnaces is a huge challenge. High temperatures, vapours that you would not really want to inhale, and the time required to do this, demand a good process. The safety module in Infor EAM guarantees and encourages safer working practices.

Permits

The sequence of processes ensures that the furnaces cannot be switched on until all of the check boxes are ticked in green. Each step creates a permit for the following step of the process.

Paperless

The high degree of care in each of these steps creates an intensive process with many chains. For this client, we have already digitalized this checklist which makes paper unnecessary.

App

Linking the digital checklists to a mobile device makes it possible to easily go through and complete them.

Real-time data and insights

Since the client no longer needs to use paper and it can work directly in the Infor EAM system with the app, it is able to obtain real-time insights. Their data is up to date which therefore further optimises the management of the work.