By Neal Walters, Nick Anderson and Oleg Kozyrenko ·
November 4, 2020
Eight months into the COVID-19 pandemic, you’ve absorbed the initial body blow and are preparing to ramp up operations in a radically changed world. You don’t need anyone to tell you yet again how challenging things are. What you do need are solutions.
- What practical steps can you take to safeguard the health of your employees?
- How can you continue to effectively serve customers and gain market share as you adapt to new demands and conditions?
- How can you make your business more resilient in the face of a prolonged pandemic or any future crises that could threaten your supply chains?
For manufacturers, some immediate answers to those questions can be found in Industry 4.0 technologies, which are already driving large leaps in productivity, and can now help the sector rebound from COVID-19 (see Figure 1).
Here are some ways manufacturers might practically apply new and established digital tech to operate safely through the pandemic, while moving toward more productive, profitable and resilient operations long term.
Problem: Maintain worker distancing
Solution: Wearable geofencing; cobots
Wrist-worn geofencing technologies (e.g., SafeZone) use proximity sensors to alert employees via haptic feedback whenever they are breaching social distancing guidelines. These devices also capture data to let you know who was in close contact with whom, so you can conduct contact tracing to quickly contain any COVID outbreak.
By Neal Walters, Nick Anderson and Oleg Kozyrenko ·
November 4, 2020
Eight months into the COVID-19 pandemic, you’ve absorbed the initial body blow and are preparing to ramp up operations in a radically changed world. You don’t need anyone to tell you yet again how challenging things are. What you do need are solutions.
- What practical steps can you take to safeguard the health of your employees?
- How can you continue to effectively serve customers and gain market share as you adapt to new demands and conditions?
- How can you make your business more resilient in the face of a prolonged pandemic or any future crises that could threaten your supply chains?
For manufacturers, some immediate answers to those questions can be found in Industry 4.0 technologies, which are already driving large leaps in productivity, and can now help the sector rebound from COVID-19 (see Figure 1).
Here are some ways manufacturers might practically apply new and established digital tech to operate safely through the pandemic, while moving toward more productive, profitable and resilient operations long term.
Problem: Maintain worker distancing
Solution: Wearable geofencing; cobots
Wrist-worn geofencing technologies (e.g., SafeZone) use proximity sensors to alert employees via haptic feedback whenever they are breaching social distancing guidelines. These devices also capture data to let you know who was in close contact with whom, so you can conduct contact tracing to quickly contain any COVID outbreak.
November 4, 2020
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