Good morning to you.
“What is Mobile Technology?” and “What does it have to do with an HSE professional?”
Before I answer these question in particular, I wish to start off by asking you three questions. Please raise your hands
Q1. How many of YOU present here is carrying a mobile phone?
(Raise of hands).
Q2. How many of you use your phone to access work-related information, like mail or calendar or other?
Q3. How many of you use your phone to access to your company’s QHSE systems?
Well, it seems like there is some work to do!
AGENDA
- In this session I will take you on to the story of Jay and Rajesh, two workers in a typical company.
- Then, I will provide a context and a definition to mobile technology and how it affects the QHSE domain of most organisations
- I will then take you back to the story of Jay and Rajesh and show how mobile tech could have shown a different result
I want to share a story of Jay, a shift incharge, Rajesh, the HSE Officer and a paper based format called the Incident Report Form!
Jay witnesses a near miss incident as he is about to leave after a long, tiring shift.
He promises himself to report the incident in his following shift by filling in the Incident Report Form.
16 hours later Jay does fill the Incident Report Form by filling in the twenty questions and submits it with our HSE Officer Rajesh.
Rajesh takes note of the details, investigates the incident and then files his finding into an exisiting HSE software or an Excel sheet.
Then, when the same situations for the third time in a month, of Jay being late, he decides to let go and not record that third incident...
At the end of the quarter the safety triangle at the reception paints the above picture.
Now, let’s get an understanding about mobile technology* In the past ten years of our existence as a software company, we at Changer have seen a rapid transition from big, complex software systems to specific, easy to use, interactive apps on personal smart mobile devices.
* This transition is what I will refer to as the “mobile wave”
* This Mobile Wave is defined by three factors:
1 Huge adoption of personal Mobile smart devices
2 The internet or the Cloud brought unprecedented agility in being online and interconnecting existing systems and those mobile devices in realtime
3 Social media democratized communication, engaging anybody to participate, from peer-to-peer, from top-to-bottom and vice versa
* The combination of these: Cloud, Mobile & Social is creating new channels of open communication, engaging anybody to add value to the whole ecosystem.
* The mobile wave is essentially enabling us to:
- share information before we physically meet.
- It is allowing us to engage in meaningful conversation without physically meeting.
- And, it allows us to collaborate. Regardless of time and place. On the devices of our preference.
- Let’s look at this mobile wave in historic context.
- I’m sure you’re familiar with the concept of the industrial revolution, starting in 1880
- Then came the computer revolution, somewhat 100 years later
- Soon after the internet emerged, internconnecting individual computers into a web
- Then as of 2010 we’re talking about information revolution. We’re producing as much data today as we’ve done in the whole history leading up to today
- And, on top of this we are witnessing a new revolution, driven by the mobile wave. It is the collaborative revolution. It is about increasingly smart apps that allow individuals to work together by sharing information, engage in meaningful communication and thus work together towards joint objectives in our organizations.
You might question whether India is ready for it. Well, I believe it is!
By mid 2013, almost half the Population of the Earth now uses mobile communications, and we’re counting regular and smartphones here.
And FYI, in January 2014, more than 6 billion apps were downloaded in just one month
By 2017, our globe will host over 4,4 billion App Users, that is 2 out of every 3 persons (SocialCubix.com); this means all smartphone users capable of running apps.
Please note how particularly Asia is predicted to be heavily growing on smartphone use!
- Apart from the fact that mobile devices are very powerful mini-computers with broad-band internetconnection we have always at hand, they come with a load of sensors on board that we carry along all the time. Think of GPS-sensor, gyroscopes for motion detection, pressure sensors for altitude determination, camera’s, microphones and more.
- Thanks to those sensors, a lot of meta-data can be collected when using
- This makes apps more easy to use, in stead of typing, we record a video, in stead of selecting a location, the GPS-sensor auto-detects location, in stead of keying in passwords we swipe our code or simply scan our fingerprint
- But most importantly, sensors allow us to get a much better factual understanding of the actual situation in which we use our apps
What does this mean to the safety on the shopfloors of our companies?
I’ll come to that shortly. Let’s first explore the definition of mobile applications, better known now as apps.
Apps are:
Built for a very specific purpose. For each purpose we’ll find a different app.
Light, easy to install & easy to use.
As compared to classic computer Software, Apps engage the audience by addressing the visual, auditive and tactile senses all at once.
Updated on a regular basis, with new features and improvements as they become available
Personalised, made for You, and always at hand
Let me give you some examples:
please think back on the day you sent your first e-mail. I remember that day. I had to dial up to internet using a modem and then download my mail in order to be able to read it. I did that maybe once or twice a day, or I dialed up when I had to send an e-mail out.
Ever since blackberry introduced their service, e-mail suddenly started to be available on my smartphone, anywhere, anytime. It made reading and writing e-mails much more convenient.
Another example:
think on the way how google maps app came up, exploiting our smartphones’ GPS and digital compass capabilities!
And imagine what’s going on today:
now that companies like Google and Apple are introducing wearable tech, adding more mobile sensors, especially for healthcare service purposes, such as heart-beat and blood-sugar level monitoring.
All examples of how Mobile Apps change the way we do our lives and our businesses.
>>> Now please take moment to think of how the power of mobile devices, sensors and specifically designed apps could be made available to us, QHSE professionals.
PAUSE
Let’s look back at the story of Jay and Rajesh. Now taking a step back, what could be wrong with this picture?
Inspite of the best intentions of both Jay & Rajesh we can see that there is a gap between the intent & impact!
One of the reasons I see is that until today we have been addressing QHSE issues from a top-down perspective, trying to drive a culture from top to down onto the workfloor. Not by choice, but by design.It is a one way reporting, usually moving upwards
and most of the times misses the big picture, the answer to “Does it really, matter?”
This makes it an exclusive culture, where the shift incharge and HSE Officer are disconnected with the larger goal.
We believe that by:
- giving an app to your employees is not just about sharing responsibility but also about empowering them.
- an app in the hand of the workman will make him or her feel connected to the bigger picture again.
So it is, from the hearts to the minds to the hands: An app in the hand of an employee is building a culture of accountability and responsibility.
An Inclusive and Participative Culture.
Apart from seeding inclusive safety cultures, mobile technology also helps in saving costs.
- It replaces paper and paper-related machines
- it reduces workload,
- it saves time
- its leaves very little room for error in recording information
Apps capture date, location, videos or a picture. And so apps can record a thousand words in just a single click.
Now, accurate observations in forms of pictures and videos,
higher in numbers, provide the basis for gaining
better insight in shopfloor safety which directs the process towards
improvement actions.
- Imagine paper based processes to be obsolete
- Imagine how a welder notifies a fellow welder on a different site about a hazardous problem with a certain piece of welding equipment
- Imagine how employees will start liking to do a simple, quick Last Minute Risk Assessment together before performing an hazardous lifting operation
- Imagine how shopfloor workers have instant on the spot access to standard operating procedures and safe working methods rather than having to walk to an office and spend time searching
- Imagine!
- After 4 years of building Safety Apps, we have seen that mobile technology adds up to safer work places and efficient processes.
- Apps in the hands of your employees help really make the safety culture become tangible!
- These are some of the companies that have gone before you in drawing the conclusion that Safety Apps help make the workplace more safe and efficient.
Now lets have a look at what our apps look like. For that, we look back at the story of Jay, and imagine how things could go differently from now on.
And while being on this mission for 4 years now, we have discovered 3 core beliefs.
1st, Common sense: think back of the story of Jay who needs to simply be able to take his responsibility in recording the incident and be home in time
2nd Communication: the same Jay, who’s now able to send out the observation from the palm of his hand to Rajesh, his colleague at the HSE department, and his peers who are working in a different shift.
3rd, last but not least: your organization will gain extra control, by newly gained insights from the observations that would otherwise have gone unrecorded
- I hope that by now you start realizing the potential of mobile technology for your organization.
- Question is: Are you and your organization ready to seize this opportunity and be a part of this revolution?
- I need you, ladies and gentlemen. I need you to know that what you are doing is a very important job in this country today.
- And I want to thank you for what you do for your organization, your people and so many others.
- We believe Mobile Apps Technology is going to change the way we look at our processes.
- My name is Jonathan and with my team, we are committed to this dream.
- I want you to believe in our dream. And together, we are looking at a better, healthier and a safer future.
Shukuria!
How do we guarantee the security of the data? (Banking etc!)
LPS / Barcode scanning? (Yes we do, sensors etc)
CCTV Linking (Integration)
- Do you understand the power of Mobile Apps Technology I your business context?
- Do you realize the potential of its usage towards operational excellence?
- Are you and your organization ready to seize this opportunity and be a part of this revolution?
- Do you believe that highest standards of Safety can be achieved in India?
- Do you believe that every person (man or a woman) in your organization deserves a safe and healthy workplace?
- We believe Mobile Apps Technology is going to change the way we look at our processes.
- My name is Jonathan and we are committed to this dream.
- I need you, ladies and gentlemen. I need you to know that what you are doing is a very important job in this country today.
- And I want to thank you for what you do for your organization, your people and so many others.
- I want you to believe in our dream. And together, we are looking at a better, healthier and a safer future.