Analysis and testing of an online solution to monitor and solve safety issues for industrial systems

Abstract

One of the main issues addressed in the context of the well-known fourth industrial revolution (also called Industry 4.0) is the theme of operators’ safety at the workplace. To this end, several innovative solutions were proposed, aiming at reducing the likelihood of accidents. In line with these considerations, in this paper an online software solution for monitoring alarms and warning originated from equipment of industrial systems is presented and tested.The solution is installed on a mobile device (i.e. a smartphone), and specifically its function is to alert the operators anytime an alarm is occurring through a simple notification, then to drive them to the instructions required to solve the problem. Tests were carried thanks to a Virtual Private Network (VPN) connecting a virtual machine where alarms are randomly generated and notifications are sent to the various connected devices. Results were analyzed from a usability perspective, by collecting the judgements expressed by four inexpert users, who were asked to rate four aspects of the tool usage; moreover, the System Usability Scale was adopted, whose score is higher than the acceptance value, demonstrating the effectiveness of the tool.