The hydrocarbon industry is human resource and capital intensive and safety measures in the workplace are essential. This is true for the whole process industry, be it power, chemical and fertilizers, pharmaceuticals or food and beverage. Therefore, organizations must safeguard their workforce first where hazardous environments are inevitable.
In process industries, maintaining safe and efficient operations requires clear communication, accurate information and consistent coordination between teams. With personnel working across shifts, facilities and locations, ensuring timely access to critical operational information is essential to minimizing risk and maintaining continuity.
Technology enables timely access to asset information, improves communication between teams and supports effective shift handovers. By making critical information readily available, organizations can identify potential issues earlier and take preventive or corrective action to protect personnel, assets and the environment.
Manual shift handover is a major contributing factor in industrial accidents, according to the UK Health and Safety Executive. Poor shift handover is due to unorganized communication between workers, lack of work/operating instructions and the handwritten or verbal sharing of information relating to operations and maintenance. An organized, accessible record of information is imperative for better decision making and analysis.
Although management deems shift handover important, there is less clarity on how it can be more effective. Digitalization of shift handover processes makes information easier to access and provides visibility to real-time data and operations logs. This creates awareness of the issues teams need to mitigate, helps avoid delays and ensures safety and compliance. Organizations with multiple geographical locations can implement centralized electronic logbooks for better visibility. This gives companies an easy-to-implement format and moves them away from traditional paper logbooks, which are often difficult to read. No one can delete information once entered, so the system maintains audit traceability.
With digitalization and mobility solutions, field operators can access clear work instructions for operations and maintenance, which helps improve decision making and information capture. Operators do this by entering data or capturing photos, which is a lot easier than working with paper-based methods, where workers attach any additional information or photos using a stapler or glue. Data becomes secure and accessible, which ensures safer work conditions.
Octave Tempo Operations Management (formerly j5 Operations Management Solutions) is an evolving framework of operations management and process safety applications, connecting people and processes from across an organization. Tempo Operations Management IndustraForm templates allow customers to transform paper, forms and spreadsheets into enterprise-level applications. Importantly, it also allows customers to configure Tempo Operations Management in a familiar spreadsheet-like environment. This configuration even extends to mobile devices.
As Tempo Operations Management applications and templates all exist on the same desktop and mobile framework, upgrades are stable and hassle-free. Simple upgrade processes saves time and financial costs, so customers can allocate more resources to operate their plants.
Are you ready to streamline your shift processes and improve your operational excellence?