Introduction

According to IBISWorld the automotive manufacturing sectors in the USA and Canada account for revenues of US $110B. The American Automotive Policy Council claims that no other industrial sector generates more jobs in America.

A specialist supplier to the automotive industry turned to TuMeke to help assess the ergonomics of its production lines. Spread over millions of square feet of manufacturing space in the US and Canada, these lines produce high-value-added automotive metal components. Timely assessment and prompt implementation of training or other remedial activities for ergonomic issues are critical for the company and its customers.

A question of confidentiality

The nature of their business means that the company has significant IP tied up in the production facilities, IP belonging to both them and their customers. Therefore, before adopting TuMeke, the company had to know that the videos recorded and submitted to TuMeke for analysis remained confidential.

Customer privacy and confidentiality is essential to TuMeke. The software offers blurring options to obscure the identity of people recorded or the ability to blur the entire video to ensure only the body joint positions are visible. State-of-the-art asymmetric encryption is also deployed so only the user’s company has access to the raw data.

To provide the company with the necessary assurance, members of the TuMeke security team met with representatives of the company's IT and legal counsel. After walking through the security measures included in TuMeke, the company was reassured that the raw video footage was secure.

The trial

With the company's concerns about confidentiality addressed, they introduced TuMeke to their three manufacturing sites.

"Using TuMeke, we could dispense with the time-consuming process of annotating and measuring work assessment videos," said the company's Corporate Health & Safety Director. "And because TuMeke identifies and highlights problem postures and movements, we can immediately focus on remedial action."

The time savings from eliminating the need to manually assess videos meant the company's safety professionals spent more time designing and implementing interventions. This resulted in them performing twice as many assessments and implementing more robust solutions.

The company is now focusing on building out risk baselines for every task.

The future

The company's assessment of TuMeke is ongoing, as they evaluate the most efficient and effective ways to apply it to their environment. However, they are actively looking at how to use TuMeke during the design and implementation process for new product lines.

"Being able to identify potential ergonomic issues before we build out a final production line would not only minimize the likelihood of work-related injuries but should save time and effort," said the company's Corporate Health & Safety Director. "Tumeke could help us make significant cost savings as its assessments could help avoid having to replace equipment after a line has been assembled."

Thanks for reading! Feel free to reach out here if you have any questions.

Best,
The TuMeke Ergonomics team

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