PlantQuest
Working with the world’s leading lifescience companies, PlantQuest digitise facilities with intelligent mapping giving context and clarity to many of your facility’s biggest challenges (think of a secure Google Maps for your facility). Leveraging your site’s existing data sources, their intuitive and accessible interface gives users the digital experience they have outside work, inside work. Optimised for brownfield environments, PlantQuest takes valuable tacit knowledge out of people’s heads, with the option of combining it with data within existing facility systems. With industry-leading cybersecurity and data privacy, PlantQuest has been deployed in some of the world’s leading lifescience facilities.
Asset Management Meets EHS
With the ongoing shift towards digital transformation in asset and facility management, there is no shortage of tools to enhance and augment the execution of asset and facility management tasks. Research has identified that the tools and solutions available to emergency response teams have remained largely unchanged in this era of digital transformation. “Pharma manufacturing units are running at a greater capacity than ever before, facing a 24/7 operation throughput. At this critical moment, manufacturers don’t have the time for emergency equipment maintenance, and we’re not talking about scheduled services. With downtime costing a unit up to $20,000 a minute, a manufacturer cannot afford a disruption in the production processes” (Kruglyak, 2021).
Prepare, Plan and Protect
In our everyday lives we use and rely on applications such as Google Maps, so we asked the question, why do we, in our industry, have to rely on complex and non-intuitive drawings for navigation? At one of our client’s sites, they are relying on about 300 layout drawings to locate critical safety assets across their facility – surely this has to stop? Deployed as a learning and productivity tool to allow for fast training of workers, execution of tasks and location of assets, PlantQuest provides an antidote to the lack of experienced staff expected by the end of the decade by locking in existing tacit knowledge. This enables incumbent employees to quickly and accurately execute routines and operations activities by bringing workers to the place of work. Identifying the need for a pinpoint accurate asset location solution, the team developed just that – to help clients take critical knowledge out of the heads of their employees, and thus reduce the time it takes to navigate complex sites locating assets.
A PlantQuest Fire & ERT Case Study
PlantQuest was asked to commission a bespoke solution concerning locating input devices on the client’s fire alarm system. The site is one of Europe’s largest pharmaceutical facilities, spread across 1,000,000+ sq ft, containing more than 1,700 rooms and 27,000 meters of walkways.
Through the experience of the site-based emergency response team (ERT), the client discovered that its workflow surrounding the location of its 5,500 input devices (primarily smoke and heat detectors) could be streamlined and improved.
The client required a system to visually map, locate and route to any of the 5,500 assets across the 1,700 rooms from any location within the facility. With the client operating 24 hours a day operation and with downtimes potentially costing millions of euros per hour, it was vital that the implementation of the PlantQuest solution would have no impact on ongoing site activities.
Due to the complexity and structural nature of the client’s facility, the availability of both WiFi and GPS connectivity across the plant was at a premium. It was paramount that the solution delivered would operate with full functionality within the areas of no connectivity.
The Fire & ERT solution delivered by PlantQuest enables the client to efficiently manage its fire and emergency assets aiding in the reduction of emergency response times. It has a user-friendly interface, coupled with cutting-edge technology, allowing for the user to navigate to any of the 5,500 fire IO assets mapped across the facility. Additionally, PlantQuest carried out an independent survey of the facilities 1,300 emergency equipment assets (Fire extinguishers, fire hydrants, eye washes, safety showers, first aid kits, etc.) allowing for responders to seamlessly locate the closest emergency equipment. Furthermore, this has provided the customer to drastically reduce the time it takes to conduct monthly regulatory checks on such assets due to PlantQuest’s multi-asset navigation functionality. The algorithm-driven navigation element solution operates entirely independent of any signals such as GPS, Bluetooth, WiFi, and 4G, meaning that the customer was not required to install and maintain costly telecoms infrastructure.
Installed on IP67 Active Pro Samsung tablets, both internal and external emergency response, and maintenance teams can now navigate the 1,000,000 sq ft facility with ease, being aware of any hazards, restricted areas, and equipment required to route to a location before departing. The client’s intelligent digital mapping twin was developed and deployed remotely. PlantQuest representatives spent as little as five hours on site.
To learn more about how PlantQuest can digitally transform your site’s operations, visit www.plantquest.com or contact info@plantquest.com.
PlantQuest will be exhibiting at HazardEx in the Hilton Dartford Bridge Hotel, London on 14 September 2022. Here the PlantQuest team will be demonstrating how they can aid in Hazardous area inspections and bring large reductions to emergency response times within large process facilities
