Machine Safety: A dashboard would help balance safety and compliance with profitability

What is a dashboard and how will that help my business? Is there a dashboard template to balance safety and compliance?

By JB Titus July 1, 2013

What is a dashboard and how will that help my business?  

To my understanding a dashboard is a new way for managing the operations of manufacturing in real time. The goal is to maximize the productivity of a machine (s) to drive profits. Dashboards are computerized applications which collect and display real time information collected from designated machines. The display on your computer (or hand help, i.e. iPad) typically includes capabilities such as:

— KPI alerts

— Element linking

— Real time refresh

— Ad-hoc query

— Trending with alerts

— Status

So, what’s this got to do with machine safety?

Everything! 

In the 1970s, 80s and 90s hard wired machine safety solutions available for compliance caused considerable unplanned machine downtime. Today, we have numerous scalable machine safety solutions (including safety automation) for mitigating hazards and meeting compliance requirements. Many newer solutions have built-in diagnostics, plug-and-play connections that reduce wiring, and they’re electronic instead of electromechanical. All three of these features can contribute significantly to reductions in downtime. Therefore, if you could pinpoint the machine safety-related causes for unplanned downtime it seems likely that increased performance/productivity would result by installing a newer scalable safety solution with the features just mentioned above. 

Okay, now that we have arrived at nirvana, are there any dashboards out there that specifically target the safety-related functions on machines?   

Has this presented you with any new perspectives? Add your comments or thoughts to the discussion by submitting your ideas, experiences, and challenges in the comments section below. 

Related articles:

Machine Safety: NRTL certified convergence of machine control and the safety-related parts combined

Machine Safety: Can hand held devices play a role?

Machine Safety: Managing operational risk

Aberdeen Group – “Operational Risk Management”, November 2012 

Contact: https://www.jbtitus.com for “Solutions for Machine Safety”.