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Essential Steps to Prepare Your Manufacturing Unit for COVID-19

In a recent interview, Rajiv Bajaj, managing director of Bajaj Auto, a global leader in motorcycle manufacturing, said, “An aligned approach is required. I am really distressed because it is a herculean task to open up”.

As India Inc. opens up again and gets back to work, why are manufacturing units at a higher safety risk in comparison to other entities such as corporate offices, hotels or educational institutions? Why is there an urgent need of a visitor and employee management system for manufacturing? This higher comparative risk can be attributed to three reasons, which are as follows-

  • Close proximity between workers- Manufacturing workers usually work in close proximity to one another during production or assembly line setups, clock-ins, lunch breaks, making social distancing difficult to achieve.
  • High duration of contact – Manufacturing workers often have prolonged closeness to coworkers during long onsite shifts on average, ride-sharing and carpooling further increasing the risk of contracting and transmitting SARS-CoV-2.
  • High Contact with Shared Surfaces: Manufacturing workers can be exposed to the virus by touching possibly infected shared surfaces such as shared equipment, tools or workstations, increasing risk of infection.

In the words of Gunter Beitinger, Vice President of Manufacturing, Siemens. “The degree of automation and digitalization is a big advantage in such a crisis. In one of our factories that is around 80% automated we only faced minor capacity losses.”

Here is how a contactless staff attendance and touchless visitor screening system, ensures a COVID-ready manufacturing unit.

  1. Face Recognition Clock-ins

As of March 2020, the Delhi Government has banned biometric attendance systems as shared surfaces can carry the novel coronavirus up to 9 days. Endangering all employees and visitors across your premises. Transition to a 100% touchless employee attendance solution powered by facial recognition. Use this zero-touch alternative to clock-in, verify and record attendance of your employees. On a daily basis, eradicating the use of touch-based shared surfaces, reducing COVID-risk and enhancing the safety cover for employees and visitors alike.  

  1. Employee Health Deceleration

Create customizable and unique health declaration forms for employees, vendors and other visitors, based on the differentiated information you want to capture from every category. Capture and record information about the presence of COVID-19 symptoms, recent travel history. COVID-19 cases across immediate family, etc based on your discretion as well as the local health guidelines. Keep a detailed, accurate and searchable record of health declarations of every individual for future reference.

  1. Body Temperature Scanning

Enable your front office teams to accurately scan the body temperature of employees, vendors & visitors, or anyone else who sets foot at your premises. Record the body temperature of every individual entering the premises, identify any high-risk individuals, blacklist them and display custom directives to them about self-isolation or work from home. Shield your premises by triggering security alerts in case an individual displays a temperature above the permissible limit.

  1. Restrict Staff access & Blacklist High-risk visitors

What happens, if an employee or visitor has body temperature, above the permissible limit or is displaying COVID-19 symptoms. Enable your teams to blacklist high-risk individuals be it, employees or visitors. Also empower your security teams by triggering instant alerts to them, in case a high-risk employee or visitor is identified at the premises. This way they can take quick action, shift that individual to a nearby health facility, ensuring the safety to all others present on the premises. You can also enable your teams to display customizable quarantine or work from home directives to high-risk employees and visitors.

  1. Safety Alerts & Emergency Response

Configure rule-based security alerts for visitors who overstay their welcome, endangering others on the premises. Send instant alerts to the host and security teams to take further action. Enable your security teams to broadcast editable emergency alerts/messages to every individual present on-premises including staff and guests in case of any emergency.  

  1. WHO-recommended Contact Tracing

According to WHO workplace guidelines during COVID-19. Contact tracing is defined as the process of identifying, assessing, and managing people who have been exposed to a disease to prevent onward transmission. Capture detailed information per visitor through customizable forms, ensure availability of accurate, detailed and easily searchable visitor records through a real-time dashboard, guaranteeing dependable contact tracing. This allows your teams to achieve a 3-fold objective of detecting cases early, improving early isolation of contacts and reducing community and healthcare-associated spread.

  1. Record Safety & Risk Status

Imagine the danger of permitting high-risk individuals into your manufacturing unit, endangering everyone else present. Shield your workplace with contact tracing, syndromic mapping and self-assessment provided by the Aarogya Setu Application developed by the Govt. of India. Conduct an easy risk evaluation of visitors via a QR scan and capture their location and latest travel history.  Integrate with this application and enable your security teams to record and track the risk status of every individual who enters your premises.

  1. Advanced Visitor Pre-Registration

Enable your employees to pre-register essential visitors days before. Create customized smart-rules as guests register in advance, adding hierarchical permissions, COVID-19 safety guidelines, GPS location, Wifi password, etc for different visitor categories. This customizable workflow ensures that you keep your visitor informed about all safety protocols, capture any important information about their travel history, safety risk and give your employees the power to approve as outsiders enter your premises.

In the words of Joachim Christ, Head of Procurement, Merck, “Technology and digitization enable end-to-end visibility across the supply chain. Having this visibility – ideally in real-time – is key to proactively run risk analyses and react fast when a crisis hits.”

Convinced about the pressing need for pandemic-proof your manufacturing units? Explore Veris Combat or Talk to our workplace specialists today and let us get our manufacturing unit, pandemic-ready, safe and secure!

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