As factories, warehouses, and distribution centers slowly reopen across the U.S. amid the COVID-19 pandemic, they’re challenged with doing so safely and in a fashion that doesn’t raise the risk of further spreading the virus among employees.
Last week, a technology supplier launched a new social distancing solution aimed to help in that effort.
Indianapolis, Indiana-based Advanced Industrial Marketing (AIM) announced its EGOpro Active Tag is now available for heavy industrial and manufacturing employers in the U.S. after initially piloting the solutions in Europe. The products are being utilized at large retailers and industrial warehousing facilities to maintain social distancing measures for employees and customers.
AIM said its new tag makes social distancing a more exact science for wearers. It uses a constant radio pulse to maintain the distance between any two tags. Whenever two tags are within six feet of each other, both tags flash an LED light and vibrate to alert the two wearers that they are too close together.
The company said that along with the tags, sensors can be placed in high-traffic areas like breakrooms, entryways, and restrooms to maintain social distancing away from production areas.
“The usage of this technology in the current pandemic is groundbreaking,” said Rob Hruskoci, AIM owner and CEO. “Employees can see how much room they have to work with one another, and employers can use this data to reconfigure workspaces to maintain the minimum safe distance while operating.”
Similarly, Ford Motor Company has been piloting Samsung Electronics smartwatches that use Bluetooth short-wave and low-power technology to detect proximity and clustering of other activated smartwatches, with the same goal of keeping factory employees six feet apart. A dozen workers at Ford’s Troy design and manufacturing plant in Plymouth, Michigan, were given the watches as part of a test group.
AIM’s tags are meant to be worn on a person’s wrist or belt, but the company said they can be deployed beyond industrial settings, like grocery store shopping carts or self-guided tours at museums.
Beyond the basic social distancing capabilities, the tags have their own serial numbers, enabling connection to a custom software solution used for tracking the number of people in a given area and notifying managers of crowding in a select area.
AIM added that in a situation where a facility may have been exposed to the coronavirus, the software could use contact tracing with each of the tag’s serial numbers.
