CMA

34 Organizational goal of “zero harm” gained momentum with 91% of our sites having no lost time injury. Due to onset of Pandemic, we also faced a great difficulty in our operation. However, we decided to “do more with less” by adopting innovative ways and utilizing advanced technological solutions. With this approach, we could prove that the good old saying “opportunity lies in the crisis itself” is very much true. Following are some of our safety initiatives that helped us tackle the unprecedented situation. USHA- AI enabled Chatbot Since various teams across departments were functioning with limited on-site staff, reaching out to Subject Matter Expert (SME) for query resolution often became difficult. To resolve this, the Safety team launched a virtual chatbot in September 2020 in close co-ordination with Human Resources department. Named as USHA Chatbot, it was a compilation of about 7000 frequently asked questions on safety aspects encompassing all safety standards, procedures and guidelines laid down by UltraTech. Leveraging the power of AI (Artificial Intelligence), USHA chatbot compared words of questions asked with those available in the system and output was generated. The chatbot was connected with organization’s information sharing portal ABG U-Link. The chatbot offered several advantages, the first and foremost being its round the clock availability and instantaneous response which reduced dependency on the SME for query resolution. Since the answers were aligned with standard requirements, hence no ambiguity was observed. USHA chatbot also resulted in significant reduction in time and efforts for resolving any queries, along with reducing any need for physical or classroom interaction. Virtual Safety Audit using Realwear HMT Though employee safety was the prime concern; inability to conduct physical audits due to covid-19 restrictions made it difficult to provide safety assurance. To overcome this, Virtual audit using ‘Realwear HMT-1’ was initiated in first phase in 12 plants in August 2020 and integrated with Microsoft Teams. The team of assessors consisted of safety professionals and line managers who spent 5 days at each unit to validate and virtually audit 17 safety standards. The results were as good as a physical safety audit, and it helped us identify various opportunities for improvement. Close to 1250 findings were identified through this exercise and were shared with respective units for taking corrective actions. Popularly recognized as world’s leading hands free remote collaboration tool, ‘Realwear HMT-1’ was a head mounted device that could easily snap to the safety helmet and could be used for video enabled interaction from any remote location, document navigation, provide guided workflow etc. Designed for hands-free user experience, it was powered with voice based operating system with local speech recognition and was programmed to function even in loud industrial environments and extreme temperature conditions. In a span of about two months, the technical team was able to customize the device in accordance with the department’s requirements. In addition to enabling real time audit and monitoring, and easy identification of discrepancies resulting in improved safety and productivity; the device also helped in reducing the travel footprint along with eliminating the risk of spreading infection. Since, UltraTech had a huge manpower of about 85 thousand people, spread across close to 50 production units; virtual safety audit was instrumental in facilitating continuation of safety assurance even during restrictions imposed due to pandemic. Application of video analytics through VEDA – Video Enabled Decisions and Alerts From a manufacturing standpoint, safety was a very big concern for the organization. Over the last 2 years, UltraTech Cement had witnessed close to 70 injuries out of which few were of high severity, resulting in loss of productive man- hours, process disruptions and breakdown. Safety though had been a focused priority at UltraTech; its dimensions were altered manifold after the onset of pandemic. With employees resuming work amidst local restrictions; there was an increased emphasis on implementing safety solutions that were scalable, efficient and effective. This required a tech-innovation that could solve a complex multi- dimensional business problem. It was seen that though video as a data source was available across various touch points in the