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IDEC Collaborative Safety / Safety2.0 | APAC

IDEC Collaborative Safety / Safety2.0

Social Responsibility Requirement
for Companies and a New Concept for Safety

The latest ICT technologies contribute to the realization of the modern ICT-based smart society. By improving not only the efficiency of our daily lives but also economic efficiency of business operators, such as manufacturing at factories.
There is a need for technology that ensures safety in line with such technological advances.

IDEC is working to eradicate occupational and industrial accidents with next-generation safety technology. We are promoting the concept of "Collaborative Safety," which makes it possible to improve management efficiency by improving productivity, and the "Safety2.0" technical measures to achieve this.

Definition of Safety

“Safety” is defined in international standards as “freedom from risk which is not tolerable” (ISO/IEC Guide 51).
Until now, as shown in the figure below, the method of ensuring human safety has transitioned from relying on human attention (Safety0.0) to separating people from machines or stopping machines (Safety1.0). Furthermore, with advances in technological innovation, “Collaborative Safety / Safety2.0” has been advocated as a concept of safety that is necessary in this new era in which there is an increasing number of environments in which people and machines coexist.

“Collaborative Safety / Safety2.0”

Collaborative Safety is a concept for safety system design that aims to ensure safety through collaborative information sharing among human (humanities), machine (science) and organization/environment (social science). It was launched in Japan based on the integrative utilization of information as to interrelated matters at a workplace, which used to be dealt with separately but can be integrated now owing to the advancement of ICT. Safety2.0 is defined as the technical measure to achieve Collaborative Safety utilizing the power of ICT. Safety can be achieved by integrating and sharing the information on human, machine and environment in an effective and efficient manner, collaboratively and holistically.

Four Things That Can be Achieved with “Collaborative Safety / Safety2.0”

Safety without Downtime

Safety2.0 makes it possible to ensure both safety and productivity, by controlling the machine’s speed or defining the operation zones depending on the capability of workers.
For example, safety and productivity are improved by recognizing the skill level and health conditions of a worker, and achieving optimal control to prevent downtime while also ensuring safety.

Visualization of Safety

Safety2.0 makes it possible, by utilizing the ICT, to visually recognize the safety status by monitoring the physical condition of workers and the condition of the equipment/system, so that appropriate measures can be taken in the event of abnormalities.

Collaborative Fail-Safe

Conventionally, fail-safe is a system design concept that the system inherently ends up in the safest failure mode possible in the event of the failure of a part, machine or the system “Collaborative Safety / Safety2.0” aims to achieve a new type of fail-safe design practice that uses ICT to integrate the conditions of machines, people, and environments.

Reduction of System Footprint

The footprint of system/machine can be reduced by ensuring workers’ safety in a human-machine coexisting environment, because safety fences are no longer needed.

CSL (Collaborative Safety Level)

With “Machine safety / Safety1.0”, there is an index called “Performance Level (PL).” This index classifies the reliability level of the safety-related control systems that perform the safety functions in machines, according to the probability of dangerous failure per unit time, and based on the magnitude of risk inherit in the machine.
IDEC believes that “Collaborative Safety / Safety2.0”will require a new index. CSL (Collaborative Safety Index), shown in Table 1, indicates the optimum level of safety and productivity.

After building a “Collaborative Safety / Safety2.0” system, this index is used to confirm the collaborative safety level of the system while also recognizing missing elements, in order to discuss directions and possibilities for improving safety levels in the future.

Safety2.0 Requirements		Collaborative Safety Level (CSL) Requirements
Item	Details	CSL 1	CSL 2	CSL 3	CSL 4
Item	Details	Secure means to avoid hazardous situations in areas used by people	Utilizing information about people, control machines to avoid hazardous situations	Utilizing information about people, control machines to avoid hazardous situations	Control human and machine conditions in real time for optimal safety
Criteria	Information (ICT) connects each component, such as people, things, and environments	Communicating information about people to things	By connecting people and things, information about people is transmitted to things and machines are controlled.	By connecting people and things, the state of things is transmitted to people, who are instructed to avoid certain actions.	By connecting people and things (or environments), optimal conditions for both can be controlled.
	Monitoring and dissemination of risk information (hazard and safety information)	Monitoring of hazard information, dissemination of information	Confirm (reduce) risk to people by disseminating the behavior and condition of people.	Confirm (reduce) risk to machines by disseminating operation information and accumulated information about things.	Share and confirm (reduce) risk to a variety of elements, including people, things, and environments.
	Receiving risk-related information and providing guidance that leads to safety through either autonomous or heteronomous control	Avoid hazardous situations through human action/operation (heteronomous control).	Implement control of things to avoid hazardous situations, through human action/operation (heteronomous control) or status confirmation (autonomous control).	Disseminate and analyze operation information and accumulated information about things, and provide guidance to avoid situations that are hazardous to people through human operation (heteronomous) or machine control (autonomous).	Analyze and learn about various elements, including people, things, and environments, implement optimal risk reduction, and avoid hazardous situations autonomously.
	Contribute to productivity	For new equipment: Achieve target production capacity, or improve capacity For existing equipment: Maintain production capacity, or improve capacity
	Communication/control technology	Signal level	Data transmission	Two-way interactive communication	Use of AI

Four Elements for Achieving “Collaborative Safety / Safety2.0”

“Collaborative Safety / Safety2.0” does not rely on technology alone. It ensures a high level of safety and productivity by holistically integrating four elements - technology, human resources, management, and rule-making.
Through the strong leadership of the top management, promoting safety as an important corporate strategy, it is now possible to ensure new safety and a high level of productivity in environments where workers and hazards coexist.

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Products and Systems that Utilize “Collaborative Safety / Safety2.0”

By utilizing the technology of “Collaborative Safety / Safety2.0”, it is possible to achieve both safety and productivity, which was difficult with conventional machine safety alone.
IDEC proposes the following “Collaborative Safety / Safety2.0”products and systems.

・ “ANSHIN sensor”
　　A sensor that uses the principle of capacitance for collaborative robots to detect people, and a non-contact method to stop robots and machines

・ “Emergency stop assist system”
　　A wearable stop switch that mechanically stops machines that are equipped with an emergency stop assist function