Enhancing Worker Safety with Mixed Reality
The costs of workplace accidents – both financial and human costs – are absolutely staggering.
The National Safety Council estimates that workplace accidents cost a total of $167 billion in the U.S. in 2022 (the most recent data available) and were responsible for 108 million lost days by workers. But that is only the financial cost.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said there were 5,486 fatal work injuries recorded in the country in 2022, a 5.7 percent increase from 5,190 in 2021 .
Mixed reality, or MR, is the blending of the physical and virtual worlds to enhance interactivity and knowledge transfer. It requires the user to don a headset, but unlike virtual reality that person has full sensory perception of the surrounding environment.
Obviously, the statistics tell us that it is incumbent on all industrial organizations to do everything possible to keep their workers safe. This is why industry leaders are turning to innovative solutions to create safer work environments. One such solution that is proving effective is mixed reality (MR).
MR can help improve overall safety compliance on tasks and, in the event of emergencies or challenging situations, address them quickly and efficiently. This technology is helping organizations train on-the-job effectively, enabling visualization of processes, and ensuring that protocol can be followed, through the use of interactive digital content. Groups are taking advantage of these capabilities now, and it too can help you take corrective measures and sustain a safer workplace over time.
Understanding the Challenges of Worker Safety
The numbers cited above speak for themselves. In a single year, just in the United States, almost 5,500 people lost their lives in workplace accidents, and the country’s economy lost more than $100 billion. Those numbers don’t even address the suffering of workers who survive workplace accidents, often enduring long-term injury or psychological torment afterward.
The ancillary impacts of workplace accidents on an organization are hard to quantify, but no less troublesome. These incidents can have a huge impact on worker morale, as staff members may worry about their safety, wonder whether management cares about their well-being, and feel for the victims of accidents. Meanwhile, increased regulatory compliance and safety inspections become part of standard operations. The overall result is a decline in operational efficiency.
It’s obvious there is more work to be done to address the dangers of the modern workplace, including a full embrace of technologies that can make industrial settings safer and more efficient.
One problem with addressing safety is there are so many different types of dangers in an industrial setting, and each workplace has its own challenges. Some plants require workers to handle hazardous materials or be in challenging tight spaces. Wind turbines require some staff to work hundreds of feet above the ground. Equipment malfunctions can cause explosions or send bits of equipment flying through the workspace.
The best-performing industrial organizations address worker safety through a multi-track strategy, which includes: worker training, regular inspections and maintenance, optimal equipment, and regular reviews of operating procedures. A key component for all of these measures is ensuring the technology used in creating a safe workplace is state-of-the-art and truly effective in delivering solutions to real challenges on-site workers may face. We’re not saying industrial companies should chase after untried technology or something that will arrive on the market soon. We’re advocating for technology that is now being used by the leading industrial companies – technology that is dependable and effective. We’re talking about mixed reality.
Role of Mixed Reality in Enhancing Worker Safety
So how can MR help to enhance a safe work environment?
A standard MR solution lets frontline workers collaborate with colleagues and experts in other locations, regardless of where the parties are. While wearing an MR headset, the engineer or technician on-site has the actual equipment in front of them and both hands available to work with it. The offsite expert can see and hear exactly what the user is experiencing, viewing, and engaging with the same situation in real time.
If the frontline worker is navigating a hazardous environment, an MR solution can help them do so with the guidance of a leading expert. You don’t have to wait for the expert to fly in, or settle for the best person on hand on-site. MR can connect you with the best regardless of the geographic or timing issues.
For example, let’s say a worker needs to install a new type of valve on a pipeline in a remote location. Using an MR system, they can communicate with both a safety officer from the head office and an engineer from the OEM who provided the valve. The engineer can ensure the new gear is properly installed by sending related information directly into the user’s field of view while they work through the process. The safety officer can make sure the worker is never subjected to unnecessary risk by highlighting points of interest in real-time ensuring the user is aware of any potential dangerous areas or gear. At the end of the session, the worker can capture photos of the installation from their headset so all parties have a record of the work performed.
Benefits of Using MR for Worker Safety
In a world of fast-paced operations, frontline workers must be experts in their fields. They need the best possible training to carry out their tasks with precision and confidence while remaining safe on the job. Mixed reality is positioned to enable this. Here are just a few ways MR is transforming workplace safety and training:
Interactive Safety Training: Safety training with MR can provide a more immersive experience compared to other methods because the trainee can work hands-on with actual equipment, under the tutelage of a remote SME. The trainee can use both hands and is not distracted by having to go to the screen of a laptop or other device. They also can access a range of digital resource materials to ensure they are following protocols when using the equipment. By being hands-on with actual equipment they gain a deeper understanding of the processes, what to expect in a real scenario, and retain the information better than by simply reading the information in a classroom.
Enhanced Communication: Phone calls require workers to provide exceptional detail through only audio and Zoom/Facetime is cumbersome. By contrast, MR allows seamless and flexible communication between workers and safety supervisors. The frontline workers receive instant feedback/guidance during critical operations and can review procedures easily to ensure they retain important information.
Accurate Safety Protocols: MR systems allow users to easily call up a range of materials (PDFs, video, 3D models) and view them while working with equipment. This means users have easy access to critical safety instructions, protocols, and the ability to bring them into the physical workspace. This in turn means they can follow correct safety procedures, with no ambiguity about proper procedure. What’s more, the users can also access 3D step-by-step models to guide them as they work through a complex task. Again, this can ensure workers have immersive instructions so they know how to operate their equipment correctly and skip no steps.
Remote Safety Audits: With the use of MR within standard operations, your safety officers won’t have to be on-site to carry out a lot of their tasks. With MR, they can conduct remote audits and inspections, identifying potential safety issues from their home office.
Documentation and Reporting: With voice commands or simple gestures, users can capture photos of work done, and forward the images to internal safety officers or OEM experts. These experts can confirm and document that the work has been completed and the work area adheres to proper safety protocols.
Emergency Response and Risk Mitigation
Of course, no workplace safety strategy is flawless, and downtime events will happen. Having MR solutions working within the fabric of your operations can help you deal with emergencies more efficiently, help your teams resume operations, and ensure these unfortunate incidences are mitigated effectively.
In a critical situation, experts can instantly connect and guide workers through the response steps, regardless of where in the world they are located. They can provide visual and auditory instructions to ensure calm and efficient action during crises. And just as important, they can see for themselves what the situation is, not having to rely on a verbal description from the frontline worker, who may (understandably) be battling feelings of stress.
Using this method, your organization can have a team of experts responding to the emergency, but only one of them needs to be in the area where the accident has occurred. This reduces the number of personnel placed in harm’s way to address the situation.
Implementation Strategies
The companies that gain maximum benefits from mixed reality – and they probably include your most successful competitors – adopt battle-tested processes for adopting MR within their operations. [Please refer to our previous blogs on “Selecting the Right Use Case For Your Mixed Reality Pilot” and “Implementing Mixed Reality: Five Steps to Build End-User Buy-In”]
To effectively implement MR in your operations and maximize its benefits, consider some of the following:
Accurate Assessment of Needs: Accurately assess your needs. Identify key safety challenges and areas where MR can have the most significant impact.
Choose the right MR tool: Select an MR solution that aligns with your specific requirements and goals.
Training and adoption: The need for training is obvious, but it’s just as important to make sure you have buy-in from critical people in the operations, including frontline workers and your safety officers. Ensure workers are trained to use the MR tools effectively.
Ongoing Evaluation and Feedback: Ensuring a safe workplace is a never-ending process. Solicit feedback from frontline staff, they are your best gauge for ensuring the solution chosen is effective in solving their challenges. Also, regular evaluation of the operational impact of MR and feedback improves the implementation and use of the technology across your organization.
The Bottom-Line
One recurring theme in our blogs on mixed reality is that MR is not science fiction – it’s not pie-in-the-sky technology that will be coming to the market in the future. The world’s best industrial companies are now using it, and MR is helping the next tier of industrialists to reach the top. It’s now part of the landscape.
The best companies use it because it is the most effective way to solve a range of industrial problems, and one of those problems is the risk of industrial accidents. Just as MR can be essential in helping your organization optimize productivity, it can also help you create the safest workplace possible.
Is it worth a bit of time to investigate? You owe it to your workers to at least consider it.