Keeping people extra safe

Safety takes priority at Aditya Birla Group and companies take a number of routes to ensure that employees are safe and injuries are prevented. Whether it’s employee safety, workplace safety, or safety at plants and sites, Group companies have taken the smart engineering and technology route to keep people protected.

With the Group’s extensive global manufacturing footprint and a 140,000+ employee base, safety policies and practices are given high priority. Along with safety practices for women, people with disabilities and visitors to plants, Group companies go the extra mile to ensure that working conditions are as safe as possible.

And with Covid continuing to present a high health risk, employee safety takes on an added criticality. Here’s how Group companies demonstrate that safety comes first at the workplace.

AI-enabled safety for Covid

When the Covid pandemic hit last year, Aditya Birla Group launched VEDA, a first-of-its kind, AI-enabled video analytics system to help create a safe environment in factories and offices. The Group Data and Analytics cell, the Group’s analytics and artificial intelligence arm, used AI to create a safe environment in both manufacturing setups and offices.

VEDA uses computer vision techniques to provide alerts and insights to take real-time decisions, while also keeping personnel safe. Thermal checks and detection of faces without masks is made possible with this machine learning-based technology.

VEDA is integrated with cameras that provide dual feeds—the RGB feed from the CMOS sensor and the thermal feed from the VOX (Vanadium Oxide) sensor. This enables a temperature check of a person’s forehead that is visible above the mask.

For face detection, VEDA uses deep learning-based CNN models. To avoid manual checks and safeguard the security personnel, the team equipped VEDA with contactless detection of face masks to ensure that face masks are worn at all times as per guidelines.

VEDA can also monitor usage of PPE gear such as helmets and vests, enhancing fire detection with visual surveillance, alerting on restricted area intrusion, vehicle detection, visual quality inspection and raise real-time audio alerts with incident trends being captured on a dashboard.

A robust social distancing measurement algorithm has also been built into VEDA. The module detects workers in a frame and then calculates the distance between each worker.

Hindalco’s drones keep safety high

Meet Elios, the drone that Hindalco uses for indoor inspections. Elios is an intuitive, reliable, and precise drone that is used to safely inspect confined spaces such as boilers, chimneys, pressure vessels, cooling towers, etc. Elios checks for safety hazards such as cracks and damage.

Electrical fires are a major hazard and Hindalco has put in place several measures to prevent incidents – such as Intelligent Remote Rack-in-Rack-out Devices for HT panels, hydrogen gas detectors in battery rooms, flame-proof light fittings and exhaust fans, arc flash relay installations, and more. All of these go a long way to prevent accidental fires and thus, injuries.

Movement within plant premises has its own safety protocols. Hindalco has installed a range of equipment to ensure safe movement and prevention of injuries to pedestrians.

Birla Carbon adopts ‘Forever Fixes’

Birla Carbon uses the ‘Forever Fix’ to eliminate hazards and events that could result in a Serious Injury or Fatality (SIF). A 'Forever Fix' ensures that mishaps do not occur again by:

• Eliminating the hazard altogether
• Substituting with a less hazardous method
• Finding engineering solutions to isolate the hazard from the person 

The company also shares best practices across all geographies to help other plants and sites identify potential issues before they occur.

Novelis is ‘Absolute’ on safety

Novelis has defined Safety Absolutes, which are the baseline of safe behaviour that every employee is responsible for understanding and following.

The Safety Absolutes are there for one reason only – to help keep every employee safe. They have been designed for Novelis to achieve its goal of Zero SIF (serious injury or fatality).

To spread the ‘absolute’ word, the company launched a new training campaign during FY21. The campaign included messaging from Novelis leadership reiterating that ‘Everything we do at Novelis has to start with safety’. Each employee was responsible for engaging in seven interactive training sessions – one for each of the Safety Absolutes.

Novelis achieved a 99 percent completion rate on the safety training within a year, a clear sign of how employees themselves have committed to safety.

Practices such as these help raise the safety bar at Aditya Birla Group companies.