How We Secured Heavy Industry
After the industrial revolution, we started to use giant machines containing huge amounts of energy. Regardless of the form of energy, its dangerous for us. So we had to isolate all of that energy in the machine. In late 80s US Government enacted a law called “The control of hazardous energy (lockout/tagout)”. This law obliges industrial personnel to lock and tag all energy control points during a maintenance or repair activity with a tag containing your full name and departmeent. So during a maintenance activity, no one can release the hazardous energy without the permission of the maintenance personnel and the other operators can know who is doing a repair or maintenance activity. So we secured the maintenance personnel’s life by locking and tagging the energy control point. But there was another problem too. The energy control points (such as valves and switchs) were unsuitable to lock. There were no hole for padlocks. So a company came up with some devices. These devices made locking a valve or a switch possible. Finally we isolated energy but how the technicians will know which energy control points are dangerous for their lives. Another company came up with an idea. This idea advices the engineer and designers of a machine to write procedure documentation for repair and maintanance activities. So technicians will know which energy point to lock. But again there was a problem with these procedure documentations. They were on paper so the engineers couldn’t update the procedures when they revised the design. This time we came up with a software to make procedures digital and available from online. It worked so good. Now we have clients such as Phillip Morris (biggest tobacco producer), Unilever (one of the biggest cozmetics producer), Novartis (huge pharmaceutical company) that use our software.