SAN FRANCISCO, Feb.
13, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM Think -- IBM
(NYSE: IBM) today announced major collaborations with Garmin
Health, Guardhat, Mitsufuji and SmartCone to monitor
worker safety in hazardous environments, including those working in
construction, mining and factories, using IoT technologies,
integrated into wearables. IBM's Maximo Worker Insights will
monitor biometric and environmental data to help identify whether
employees are experiencing dangers or risk. Data will be gathered
in near real-time from wearables, smart devices and environmental
sensors to help organizations quickly respond to problems or react
to changing environmental conditions.
Employees working in rapidly changing environments face shifting
conditions, whether on the factory floor, on the forklift, atop a
cell tower or drilling into the earth. Utilizing IoT to understand
what workers are doing in the context of the dynamic environment
around them – including heat, height, weather and gas levels –
allows organizations to implement near real-time and prescriptive
safety practices to help protect the wellbeing of workers and which
should help them maintain lower insurance costs.
For employees, this new offering monitors potential
environmental threats to their safety and security as they work on
the front lines. For employers, the solution is designed to
help them identify and respond to potential hazards in an effort to
keep their workforce safe. Nonfatal workplace injuries account
for close to $60 billion in
workers' compensation costs in the U.S. Although safety controls
and personal protective equipment are mandatory in most hazardous
jobs, this solution is designed to help companies to identify
and respond to problems or react to changing environmental
conditions. In fact, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
nearly 3 million nonfatal occupational injuries were recorded
in 2017.
"Worker safety is a critical priority for all enterprises and
this collaboration is a major milestone in dramatically improving
the way enterprises identify and eliminate hazards in the
workplace," said Kareem Yusuf Ph.D., general manager, IBM Watson
IoT. "We are thrilled to work with Garmin, Guardhat, Mitsufuji and
SmartCone, and leverage their respective leadership and commitment
to help improve safety in the workplace," continued Dr. Yusuf.
"Garmin Health is excited to work with IBM Watson to
modernize worker safety," said Travis
Johnson, Global Product Lead, Garmin Health. "Combining the
powerful analytic capabilities of the IBM Watson IoT solution with
the high-quality sensor data and long battery life of Garmin
devices creates a great solution for remotely monitoring workers
with minimal user burden."
"The implementation of smart protective equipment allows us to
better analyze workplace data and provide important safety insights
in near real-time," said Saikat Dey,
Guardhat Co-Founder and CEO. "By working with IBM, we are able to
leverage Maximo Worker Insights to bring smart safety to scale in
the construction, manufacturing and refining industries."
"IBM Maximo Worker Insights delivers the near real-time insight
that our clients need to address the safety of their workers," said
Ayumu Mitera, CEO,
Mitsufuji. "We are excited to work with both IBM and our
clients to develop the hamon solution further. We see IBM as a
valuable member of our team, not only providing powerful Internet
of Things technologies, but also helping us identify new market
opportunities around the world."
"We are thrilled to work with a global leader such as IBM and
integrate IBM Maximo Worker Insight technology into our platform,"
said Tenille Houston, VP
Communications and Marketing, SmartCone. "With the ever-evolving
workplace, SmartCones' comprehensive end-to-end solution combined
with IBM's IoT technology and advanced analytics provides the
optimal pairing to best meet industry needs."
Garmin Health Companion SDK
Garmin, a global leader in wearable technology, is teaming up with
IBM to offer organizations who deploy the IBM Maximo Worker
Insights platform to receive alerts based on near real-time sensor
data from workers wearing Garmin activity trackers. By embedding
the Garmin Health Companion SDK in the IBM Maximo Worker Insights
platform, supervisors and safety officers can receive near
real-time notifications for high heart rate and man down scenarios,
as well as review historical analytics based on the biometric
signals from Garmin wearables.
Guardhat and its smart hard hats
Guardhat's KYRA IoT
platform integrates and complements the IBM Worker Insights
solution to provide near real-time situational awareness to workers
and company operations through the use of Smart PPE wearables.
Companies can gain deeper understanding of the field situation and
raise awareness in the organization, to determine best practices
and methods for risk mitigation thereby managing or maintaining
lower insurance costs.
Mitsufuji and its hamon® wearable shirt
Mitsufuji, a
wearable platformer in Japan, has
launched a new wearable "shirt" called hamon® to track IoT sensor
data from worker's biometrics to help ensure safety and
productivity in extreme environments. The hamon® shirt, made from
silver conductive fibers, collects a wearer's biometric data,
including heart rate, body temperature and location, as well as
environmental data such as humidity, temperature, noise and toxic
gas levels, together with the use of IBM Maximo Worker Insights. By
connecting to the IBM Maximo Worker Insights solution on the IBM
Cloud, this data can be analyzed in near real-time, with alerts and
alarms signaled on mobile devices to take a break, change
locations, etc., before overexertion or injury occur.
SmartCone and its highly portable system
SmartCone, a
provider of smart, IoT-based safety and monitoring solutions for
securing vulnerable and hazardous zones, large and small, is
working with IBM and integrating Maximo Worker Insights into its
highly portable system to monitor worker safety in the utilities
industry, community traffic, construction, mining and industrial
environments with moving or dangerous no-go zones. Utilizing
multi-sensors, audio/video, communication capabilities, computing
and edge gateway capabilities, TheSmartCone™ system
combines with IBM Maximo Worker Insights to provide supervisors and
safety officers with near real-time notification and historical
analytics on hazards related to falls, "man-downs," no-go zones,
excessive temperatures and more.
About IBM Think
At Think 2019, IBM will outline
new offerings, client engagements, partnerships, technology
breakthroughs and developer tools that underscore how IBM and
partners are changing the way the world works. For more
information, visit the IBM Think 2019 Newsroom:
https://newsroom.ibm.com/think. Follow the conference on Twitter at
#think2019 and @ibmlive, and go to
https://www.ibm.com/events/think/ for the full schedule and
live streaming agenda.
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SOURCE IBM