Equipment
Safety

Rental Programs Offer Broad Access and Exploration of Smart PPE

Industrial wearables derive real-time insights from on-body or environmental data to assess risks.
By Heidi E. Lehmann
August 18, 2021
Topics
Equipment
Safety

Leaders are increasingly taking a “total worker health” approach to gauging employees’ fitness for duty in potentially hazardous conditions such as chemical plants, hot construction sites and when workers are working alone. Every day, there’s a company that explores or wants to explore the use of worker wearable sensors to track potential incidents and near misses and anticipate and plan for problems before they turn into actual accidents and recordable events.

Worker wearables are smart personal protective equipment (PPE), part of the broader product category called industrial tech, are devices that use sensors worn by the worker, cloud connectivity for gathering and analyzing data collected by the sensors, and real-time delivery mechanisms (such as smart phone apps) to provide safety information to workers, safety supervisors and other employees. The information helps predict and prevent safety incidents. Other examples of smart PPE include augmented or virtual reality glasses to assess worksite situations and environments and full-body exoskeleton suits to track key movements and provide on-the-job support to workers.

Typically, these industrial wearables are used for deriving real-time insights from on-body or environmental data to assess risks such as proximity, sound, dust, gas, falls, heat, fatigue, over exertion, injuries and illnesses. Output from wearables include real-time alerts and trend data in various forms.

Industrial wearables are part of the growing “connected worker” strategy for increasing safety and productivity across workforces at the environmental and physiological level. According to Gartner Research, 60% of professionals view IOT (Internet of Things) or Smart PPE/industrial wearables as high-impact or essential to their businesses going forward. Soon, they will represent a larger percentage of the overall industrial companies’ budget, which has grown 66% in the past two years.

Smart PPE is part of the even larger IIOT (Industrial Internet of Things) or the what’s called the Industrial 4.0 Revolution, forecasted to reach $310 billion by 2023, and expected to transform worksites across the globe.

The positive impact of industrial wearables on safety, productivity and cost savings is shifting the paradigm. However, getting started on a program can seem overwhelming to small and big companies, though likely for different reasons.

Larger construction companies and industrial conglomerates struggle with having to achieve time-consuming consensus across multiple departments before a large scale industrial tech deployment is approved.

Small construction companies may not have the budget required to invest in an enterprise SAAS (Software As A Service) subscription, which is often the model for industrial tech, especially wearable Smart PPE, which provides in-depth analytics and Application Programming Interface integrations to collect and analyze data.

To ease the selection, onboarding, and ultimate use of smart PPE, industrial tech manufacturers have started to offer rental packages of their devices and systems to accelerate the use of the technology. Many manufacturers offer their programs during certain season, such as summer for heat monitoring smart PPE, or on a per-project basis. Some programs can be purchased online, with training also offered online, much like other SAAS-focused programs. Rental programs are becoming popular, as large and small companies “try before they buy.”

Here’s what contractors need to know about smart PPE rentals.

  • Rental options offer accessibility and flexibility, many times with no strings attached. Read rental agreements carefully to understand if they auto-renew, when equipment must be returned, and if the manufacturer offers a discount if companies decide to keep the systems longer term.
  • Understand system limitations of smart PPE rental programs. A device rental may not include some of the in-depth retrospective analysis and planning data, which is part of the appeal of industrial tech systems among larger companies for enterprise-wide EHS planning and management.
  • The rental program should enable rapid deployment with no long-term obligation, so it can be up and running quickly to start providing benefits to workers and the company.
  • Ideally, the rental devices/system should be affordable, easy to order, and easy to implement. It should be backed by support.
  • For larger companies, a rental model can even be tied into a more structured “proof of concept” which may also include on-the-ground deployment and consultation.

Know the cost of not giving smart PPE a try. Understand the cost-benefit analysis to the business. Industrial tech is changing how companies manage their workforces to mitigate risk. Every day, game-changing tech is being invented. Testing how it can positively affect your business, and ultimately save a person’s life, are reasons to explore how the technology works.

by Heidi E. Lehmann
Heidi E. Lehmann is president and co-founder of Kenzen, the smart PPE innovator focused on physiological monitoring and the prevention of heat injury and death among workers. Kenzen’s real-time heat monitoring system is used by companies to keep workers safe from heat, fatigue, exertion, fever and to detect illness on the job. Lehmann is a mobile technology entrepreneur in the connected devices/wearable products, mobile platforms, and distributed media arena.

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