The Smart Track ecosystem was chosen out of over 100 proposals to increase the safety levels of the workers present within the Ori Martin production site.
The Lighthouse of Ori Martin, a Brescia-based company that produces special steels for automotive and mechanical engineering applications, and Tenova, a Techint Group company based in Castellanza (Varese) specialize in engineering solutions for the metallurgical and mining industry, are both focused on the Steel 4.0 paradigm.
An important issue for the LHP Ori Martin / Tenova was to increase worker safety as the steel mill environment represents various risks and dangers for the health of operators. To meet this need to implement cybersafety within the LHP, an Open Innovation approach was chosen to collect the most innovative technologies and solutions on the market.
The Smart Track ecosystem was chosen out of over 100 proposals to increase the safety levels of the workers present within the Ori Martin production site.
The solution, currently active in over 100,000 square meters of the facility, is made up of wearable devices called WeTAG, sensor networks called anchors, proprietary algorithms for data processing and a SmartStudio web application for managing the entire system.
WeTAG devices are always worn by workers, but they completely respect their privacy. This means that the worker is not tracked continuously because the system is activated exclusively following an emergency event to minimize intervention times and save more human lives.
The design approach for mapping the site involved receiving all scale plans for the areas targeted for the installation, their digitization within the SmartStudio application, and positioning anchors to ensure proper coverage where the operator works. With Bluetooth Low Energy technology, the facility is divided into grids with each having its own associated BLE anchor.
During an emergency event, the WeTAG communicates with the anchors and the SW present on Ori Martin’s server estimates their position at the grid level. In other words, the estimated position corresponds to the position of the BLE anchor that detected a stronger power signal. Through the Smart Track algorithms, the possibility of having ambiguity between two neighboring areas is minimized but this possibility is not excluded since the BLE is very affected by interference with the human body (an anchor placed behind the operator receives a very low signal strength which alters the estimate of the position of the emergency event considering it at a greater distance than the real one).
The communication with the central server takes place directly with the M2M sims present on the WeTAG device. Since a steel plant’s environment is very complex, it was necessary to implement the BLE mesh network in some facility areas where the WeTAG device was not covered by data connectivity, for example in some areas under the furnaces.
Real-time safety
Monitoring in real-time for “man down” situations is possible in two different ways thanks to the inertial platform present within the WeTAG:
- Inclination greater than 75° with respect to the pre-set rest condition (customizable). In this mode it is recommended to wear the WeTAG on a belt or chest attached with velcro or clip.
- Abrupt acceleration indicating a fall of the operator. In this mode it is recommended to wear the WeTAG on a belt or the chest via velcro or clip.
WeTAG devices are worn by workers with complete respect for privacy, which means that the worker is not tracked continuously because the system is activated only following an emergency event.
To ensure the most complete coverage of “man down” emergencies, it is possible to combine the methods described above.
Following an alarm event (man down / SOS), the WeTAG sends an alarm notification on the central server and the web application shows the georeferenced position on a digitized map. In addition, an alarm notification via email is also sent.
The solution management SW application is divided into two distinct but interconnected modules, Smart Safety Server and web application.
The first module consists of:
- DB for system configuration
- Location engine to estimate the location of the emergency event
- Sender to send alarm notifications via chatbot, email, sms and calls to a list of users agreed with by the customer. Currently notifications are sent exclusively via email
The second SW module is a web application to view and manage the alarm signals on the georeferenced map of the site with the possibility of managing sites scattered throughout the world in a single application.
