[Solutions Spotlight] Harnessing AI to improve workplace ergonomics

Blake McGowan: Meagan, thank you for the opportunity to speak with yourself and the listeners online. I'm really excited to share some information to improve the lives of the global working population.

Meagan: Yeah, absolutely. So, let's dive in by starting with the basics. Can you explain to me what is, and also what is not, ergonomics?

Blake: Yeah, that's a really important question. You know, it still surprises me today, interacting with EHS professionals, some misconceptions, confusion, maybe some apprehension about ergonomics. But the definition that I subscribed to is that ergonomics is about designing the workstation characteristics to match human performance capabilities. Fundamentally, it's an engineering discipline [that] when done poorly has health and safety consequences.

And I think some of the confusion comes in with some of the health and safety agencies, such as NIOSH and OSHA, who only say that ergonomics is about reducing injuries. But truly ergonomics is about reducing injuries as well as improving business performance. So, having that more global understanding and understanding that there are many benefits to ergonomics beyond just reducing injuries and costs, is really, really important.

Meagan: Yeah. Great. And you touched on some of the really important reasons that ergonomics is a really important and vital issue, but let's talk about some of the ways that companies can manage this. So, what are proven, sustainable and systematic methods companies can use to manage ergonomics?

Blake: Yeah. The number one way is to make ergonomics a process, developing some type of management systems, such as ISO 45001, and managing in that way following the Plan-Do-Check-Act. Being a little bit more proactive about implementing ergonomic principles and in actually doing things, being less reactive to it and having some plans just like how you manage any other thing, for example, quality. You know, you put in systems, you put in metrics, you put in targets, you provide people roles and responsibilities. You proactively try to reduce risks. You proactively try to improve performance.

That's really the best way to manage this and make sure this is a sustainable process long-term. And get away from maybe the tactical reactive ways of how some groups do ergonomics. It is a management system. It is strategic, it is both, and as well, is tactical.

Meagan: Yeah. And, of course, if a company is looking to implement a new process, the best place to start usually is an assessment of where a company is at. So, traditionally, how do people conduct ergonomics assessments?

Blake: Yeah. Traditionally, and when I started my career in ergonomics it was done the old-fashioned way. It was a lot of pen and paper, a lot of in-person training. So, traditionally, starting off with an ergonomic initiative, an expert would come in and give training to your group. That training was over a short duration, it was verbal, it was visual, but it kind of started and ended. And you assumed all of that knowledge was transferred to your team so that they went out into the facility and started to do observation-based assessments.

They retained that information and then they would complete what I would say would be more simplistic risk assessments to quantify and prioritize risk. You know, it was very labor-intensive to learn [and] very labor-intensive to complete assessments. And the timeframe of making improvements was much longer. So, it was much more difficult back in the day.

Meagan: Yeah. And now, of course, there are these new technologies that have come in to make the process much more efficient. So, tell me a little bit about that. How can technology improve the quality and efficiency of the ergonomics effort?

Blake: Yeah. I think you hit on the two important points. Using technology software, artificial intelligence, machine learning, it just gives you better quality data. If you have better data, you have better information. With that better information you can use, you have more knowledge and it allows you to make better actual insights. So, that's the big thing with the technology. It makes getting the good data faster. It's more repeatable, more reliable, more accurate, you're much, much more objective in your ergonomic initiative than being subjective. And you're not always concerned about the judgment an individuals making. You have the software to take on those types of hard decisions.

Meagan: Yeah, of course, then VelocityEHS has innovated a solution to help companies with all of this. The VelocityEHS industrial ergonomics software in fact is built on three components: learn, do and manage. So, let's walk through each of these individual components. Let's start with the learning. How does technology help during the learning component?

Blake: Yeah. I mean the learning component is all about transferring knowledge to your workplace. And really the benefit of that is having sustainable information during your ergonomics initiative. And one of the best things about having technology related to learning and training, it enables you to get one consistent training program. So, it doesn't matter which trainer gives the training, the software always gives you the exact same training, no matter what day of the year it is, what time of the day, [it] gives you the exact same training as many times as you want it. It's always there.

Then the other better thing with the technology is that it allows you to easily translate all of that online training into multiple languages. So, now, you kind of transitioned from being a global company deploying an ergonomic initiative only in English, which I've seen that fail multiple times, to a global company deploying a global ergonomics initiative and all of your local languages.

So, the technology and the training side of it just gives better information and more consistent way very, very efficiently to your employees. In the past, doing in-person training, if I want to do it, in-person training across the globe, I'd have to travel there. We'd have to organize 25 people in the room because it was expensive and we spent two full days. Now I don't have to travel anywhere. People can consume that content whenever they want, whatever frequency, whatever speed and whatever time of the day. So, it just, the technology makes that transfer of knowledge so much easier and much more reliable.

Meagan: Yeah. And I can see that would be especially helpful for pharma companies. Many of which are global enterprises with facilities spread out all over the world. And, of course, people from all over the world working, they're speaking different languages. So, I could see how that would be very useful in a lot of pharma facilities. So then, once a company has passed through the learning component, then they get into the do part of the equation. Tell me about how your technology helps with that.

Blake: Yeah, I mean, the do part of the software is all about conducting ergonomic assessments in the job improvement process. The best thing it does is ensures accountability of actually doing assessments and actually implementing solutions. And that the technology allows that to be a little bit more visual and sustainable, but we're really excited about our sensorless motion capture technology that really automates almost 100% of the risk assessments.

By just using a mobile device or a tablet and being able to video an individual doing the task, technology can now identify that person in the video without any external wearables or devices. And it can actually conduct that risk assessments for you. I mean, it's just absolutely amazing. It takes all of the subjectivity out of the assessment. It takes all the concern out of it. You get a really highly objective, repeatable, reliable, but even a better assessment.

When you ask an individual to do a manual observation, you have to make that assessment easy enough so the population can actually complete it. Now, when using the technology and artificial intelligence, you can make that assessment a lot more complicated. And as a result, get better information out of your assessments, so that you can focus on the highest priority jobs or the real risks and really be effective and efficient in your job improvement credits. So, it's an absolute game-changer and it provides so much benefit to companies with this technology

Meagan: Great. And so, then after a company has done the learning, and now they've implemented some of these better ergonomics practices and they're looking to manage these changes for the long term. How does your technology help with that?

Blake: The best thing about the reporting side of the technology is just the visibility. And when managing an ergonomics process or any type of process using excel spreadsheets or paper or something that's not accessible, it's just really hard to communicate. So, having all that high-quality data in one location, you can basically pick and choose what information you want to put into a report. So, you get incredibly important information presented the way that you want instantaneously. And this almost turns into what we call 24/7, 365 auditing because all of that data is in one location, I can access it at any point. It's real-time, it's visual and it gives me a clear understanding of my risk profile, but more importantly, the activities and also what I've accomplished. So, it just makes that communication so much easier using technology.

Meagan: Great. And I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit more about this issue and how it plays out in a manufacturing setting, particularly with pharma companies. So, keeping in mind that pharma companies have employees, I mean, in addition to office settings, they also have employees that work in labs and then they have manufacturing facilities and then, of course, on top of that distribution warehouses. So, what are the common issues that you see in these kinds of manufacturing settings?

Blake: Yeah, I mean, there are common issues, as you said in the office environment, in the lab environment, as well as the manufacturing. So, in the office environment, the common issue is improper, workstation setup. People more recently been forced to work from home. You may have had a proper workstation set up in your office, a traditional office, and now you might be working from home. So, having a proper setup of your chair, workstation, monitor keyboard is incredibly more important nowadays because everyone has their own space at home doing this.

So, those are the traditional things that we see from the office environment. You know, lab I mean, the traditional issues that we see there around things like pipe heading, animal handling, forceful exertions of moving product, fume, hoods, and freezers, those all types of things. And you're also wearing certain personal protective equipment that also provides some issues. And in the manufacturing side of the thing, a lot of it comes down to manual materials, handling. You're loading some raw products on the front end of the manufacturing process and on the back end, you're packaging and then loading into corrugate for transportation. So, there're some really common issues that we see in the office, in the lab, and in the manufacturing environments within the pharmaceutical.

Meagan: Great. And I'm wondering if you could give me any examples of how this technology has been transformative for any pharma or other manufacturing companies?

Blake: Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, there are so many stories, I'll try and just pick a few. But, one of the stories that I heard from our customer when they transitioned to this technology is in the years past, they would have the resources, the people maybe do 10 or 20 risk assessments per year, and actually address some of those with some job improvements, because it was so labor-intensive with the training, as well as the assessment time.

And they got back to us after the first month of using the software and said, we've actually assessed every job on our facility because it's so easy to point and click, [and] the video, the automation and the artificial intelligence, does the assessment for you and it's so, so fast, that they were able to do a complete risk profile of all of their manufacturing and lab environments within one month. I mean, that's game-changing.

The second thing is, now you kind of shift how your ergonomics team and your professionals apply their knowledge. Prior to this technology, so much of your time went into training and went into risk assessments. So, 80% of your time you were doing the quantification of the problem. Now, it's maybe 20% of the time, and now you have this 80% leftover in order to actually make physical change, engage with the operator. This type of technology just encourages employee engagement and it encourages employee engagement in the job improvement process. So, those are two stories that I think the listeners would appreciate.

Meagan: Yeah, that's great Blake. Well, thank you so much for that great explanation of VelocityEHS's Industrial Ergonomics Software. And just shedding a little bit of light on how software technology in general can improve life on the job for pharma plant employees.

Blake: Thanks, Meagan. I really appreciate this opportunity and I hope the listeners gained some new insights.

Meagan: Yeah. Absolutely. You've been listening to a special solution spotlight episode of ''Off Script.'' Thanks so much for joining us, everyone. Stay safe and be well

For more, tune into Off Script: A Pharma Manufacturing Podcast.

Meagan: Ever since humans began working with tools, they've tried to create tools that fit well with their bodies. In fact, we may think that the idea of ergonomics has only been a workplace issue for the last few decades, but it has actually been a documented principle, that's been around for centuries. Archeologists have actually uncovered ancient Greek drawings, depicting chairs, designed to fit the contours of the lower back and hand tools made in the same shapes used today. And the consequences of not using ergonomic tools or repeating physical actions in a way that harm the body was also documented long ago.

In one of the earliest known documents related to workplace injuries, an 18th-century physician in Italy wrote a medical journal called diseases of workers, that described cases of writer's cramped, telegrapher's wrist and homemades knee. And not only have poor ergonomic practices been linked to a host of physical problems, they can also have a major impact on workplace efficiency. Improving posture and physical habits to allow for fewer wasted motions and less exertion has been linked to increased worker productivity and reduced errors.

Also, cutting down on the amount of injuries can save money for companies by decreasing workers' comp payouts and helping businesses retain healthier and happier employees for a longer amount of time. However, many companies might overlook this critical aspect of workplace safety, and this is where innovative artificial intelligence can come to the rescue.

I'm Meagan Parrish, and you're listening to a special solution spotlight edition of Off Script: Pharma Manufacturing's podcast, that goes beyond the pages of our magazine to discuss the issues that matter to the industry most. In this episode, we're taking a look at Industrial Ergonomics Software by VerocityEHS. It's an all-in-one solution for managing workplace ergonomics and non-office environments, such as inside pharma manufacturing facilities.

By using this cloud-based software, pharma companies can improve workplace ergonomics with the solution sensorless motion capture technology that harnesses AI to quickly capture real-time assessment data with a camera found on any mobile device. The solution also includes on-demand e-learning tools that help workers quickly learn and improve ergonomic practices, and then helps maintain these new skills with data-driven reporting functions that help design out the risk of injury.

So, to learn more about workplace ergonomics, I'm joined today by Blake McGowan, who is the director of Ergonomics Research for VelocityEHS. Blake, thank you so much for joining me today.

Blake: Meagan, thank you for the opportunity to speak with yourself and the listeners online. I'm really excited to share some information to improve the lives of the global working population.

Meagan: Yeah, absolutely. So, let's dive in by starting with the basics. Can you explain to me what is, and also what is not ergonomics?

Blake: Yeah, that's a really important question. You know, it still surprises me today, you know, interacting with EHS professionals, you know, some misconceptions, confusion, maybe some apprehension about ergonomics. But the definition that I subscribed to is that ergonomics is about designing the workstation characteristics to match human performance capabilities. Fundamentally, it's an engineering discipline when done poorly has health and safety consequences.

And I think some of the confusion comes in with some of the health and safety agencies, such as NIOSH and OSHA, who only say that ergonomics is about reducing injuries. But truly ergonomics is about reducing injuries as well as improving business performance. So, having that more global understanding and understanding that there are many benefits to ergonomics beyond just reducing injuries and costs, is really, really important.

Meagan: Yeah. Great. And you touched on some of the really important reasons that ergonomics is, you know, a really important and vital issue, but let's talk about some of the ways that companies can manage this. So, what are proven, sustainable, and systematic methods companies can use to manage ergonomics?

Blake: Yeah. The number one way is to make ergonomics a process. You know, developing some type of management systems, such as ISO 45001, and managing in that way following the Plan-Do-Check-Act. You know, being a little bit more proactive about implementing ergonomic principles and in actually doing things, being less reactive to it and having some plans just like how you manage any other thing, for example, quality. You know, you put in systems, you put in metrics, you put in targets, you provide people roles and responsibilities. You proactively try to reduce risks. You proactively try to improve performance.

You know, that's really the best way to manage this and make sure this is a sustainable process long-term. And get away from maybe the tactical reactive ways of how some groups do ergonomics. It is a management system. It is strategic, it is both, and as well, is tactical.

Meagan: Yeah. And, of course, if a company is looking to implement a new process, the best place to start usually is an assessment of where a company is at. So, traditionally, how do people conduct ergonomics assessments?

Blake: Yeah. You know, traditionally, and when I started my career in ergonomics, it was done the old-fashioned way. You know, it was a lot of pen and paper, a lot of in-person training. So, traditionally, starting off with an ergonomic initiative, an expert would in and give training to your group. That training was, you know, over a short duration, it was verbal, it was visual, but it kind of started and ended. And you assumed all of that knowledge was transferred to your team so that they went out and to the facility and started to do observation-based assessments.

They retained that information and then they would complete what I would say would be more simplistic risk assessments to quantify and prioritize risk. You know, it was very labor-intensive to learn very labor-intensive to complete assessments. And the, you know, the timeframe of making improvements was much longer. So, you know, it was much more difficult back in the day.

Meagan: Yeah. And now, of course, there are these new technologies that have come in to make the process much more efficient. So, tell me a little bit about that. How can technology improve the quality and efficiency of the ergonomics effort?

Blake: Yeah. I think you hit on the two important points, you know. You know, using technology software, artificial intelligence, machine learning, you know, it just gives you better quality data. You know, if you have better data, you have better information. With that better information you can use, you have more knowledge and it allows you to make better actual insights. So, that's the big thing with the technology. It makes getting the good data faster. It's more repeatable, more reliable, more accurate, you're much, much more objective in your ergonomic initiative than being subjective. And you're not, you know, kind of always concerned about the judgment in individuals making. You have the software to take on those types of hard decisions.

Meagan: Yeah, of course, then VelocityEHS has innovated a solution to help companies with all of this. The VelocityEHS industrial ergonomics software in fact is built on three components learn, do, and manage. So, let's walk through each of these individual components. Let's start with the learning. How does technology help during the learning component?

Blake: Yeah. I mean the learning component is all about transferring knowledge to your workplace. And really the benefit of that is having, you know, sustainable information during your ergonomics initiative. And one of the best things about having technology related to learning and training, it enables you to get one consistent training program. So, it doesn't matter which trainer gives the training, the software always gives you the exact same training, no matter what day of the year it is, what time of the day gives you the exact same training as many times as you want it. It's always there.

Then the other better things with the technology that allows you to easily translate all of that online training into multiple languages. So, now, you kind of transitioned from being, you know, a global company deploying an ergonomic initiative only in English, which I've seen that failed multiple times, to a global company deploying a global ergonomics initiative and all of your local languages.

So, you know, the technology and the training side of it just gives better information and more consistent way very, very efficiently to your employees. You know, in the past, you know, doing in-person training, you know, if I want to do it, in-person training across the globe, I have to travel there. We'd have to organize 25 people in the room because it was expensive and we spent two full days. Now I don't have to travel anywhere. People can consume that content whenever they want, whatever frequency, whatever speed, and whatever time of the day. So, it just, the technology makes that transfer of knowledge so much easier and much more reliable.

Meagan: Yeah. And I can see that would be especially helpful for pharma companies. Many of which are global enterprises with, you know, facilities spread out all over the world. And, of course, you know, people from all over the world working, they're speaking different languages. So, I could see how that would be very useful in a lot of pharma facilities. So then, once a company has passed through the learning component, then they get into the do part of the equation. Tell me about how your technology helps with that.

Blake: Yeah, I mean, the do part of the software is all about conducting, you know, ergonomic assessments in the job improvement process. You know, the best thing it does is ensures accountability of actually doing assessments and actually implementing solutions. And that the technology allows that to be a little bit more visual and sustainable, but we're really excited about our sensorless motion capture technology that really automates almost 100% of that risk assessments.

You know, by just using a mobile device or a tablet and being able to video an individual doing the task, technology can now identify that person in the video without any external wearables or devices. And it can actually conduct that risk assessments for you. I mean, it's just absolutely amazing. It takes all of the subjectivity out of the assessment. It takes all the concern out of it. You know, you get a really highly objective, repeatable, reliable, but even a better assessment.

You know, when you ask an individual to do a manual observation, you know, you have to make that assessment easy enough so the population can actually complete it. Now when using the technology and artificial intelligence, you can make that assessment a lot more complicated. And as a result, get better information out of your assessments, so that you can focus on the highest priority jobs or the real risks and really be effective and efficient in your job improvement credits. So, it's an absolute game-changer and it's just, you know, provides so much benefit to companies with this technology

Meagan: Great. And so, then after a company has done the learning, and now they've implemented some of these better ergonomics practices and they're looking to manage these changes for the long term. How does your technology help with that?

Blake: You know, the best thing about the reporting side of the technology is just the visibility. And when managing an ergonomics process or any type of process using excel spreadsheets or paper or something that's not accessible, it's just really hard to communicate. So, having all that high-quality data in one location, you can basically pick and choose what information you wanna put into a report. So you get incredibly important information presented the way that you want instantaneously. And this almost turns into what we call 24/7, 365 auditing because all of that data is in one location, I can access it at any point. It's real-time, it's visual and it gives me a clear understanding of my risk profile, but more importantly, the activities and also what I've accomplished. So, it just makes that communication so much easier using technology.

Meagan: Great. And I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit more about this issue and how it plays out in a manufacturing setting, particularly with pharma companies. So, keeping in mind that pharma companies have employees, I mean, in addition to office settings, they also have employees that work in labs and then they have manufacturing facilities and then, of course, on top of that distribution warehouses. So, what are the common issues that you see in these kinds of manufacturing settings?

Blake: Yeah, I mean, there're common issues, as you said in the office environment, in the lab environment, as well as the manufacturing. So, in the office environment, the common issue is, you know, improper, workstation setup. People more recently been forced to work from home. You may have had a proper workstation set up in your office, a traditional office, and now you might be working from home. So, having a proper setup of your chair, workstation, monitor keyboard is incredibly more important nowadays because everyone has their own space at home doing this.

So, you know, those are the traditional things that we see from the office environment. You know, lab I mean, the traditional issues that we see there around things like pipe heading, animal handling, forceful exertions of moving product, fume, hoods, and freezers you know, those all types of things. And you're also wearing certain personal protective equipment that also provides some issues. And in the manufacturing side of the thing, a lot of it comes down to manual materials, handling. You know, you're loading some raw products since the front end of the manufacturing process and on the back end, you're packaging and then loading into corrugate for transportation. So, there're some really common issues that we see in the office, in the lab, and in the manufacturing environments within the pharmaceutical.

Meagan: Great. And I'm wondering if you could give me any examples of how this technology has been transformative for any pharma or other manufacturing companies?

Blake: Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, there're so many stories for, I'll try and just pick a few. But, you know, one of the stories that I heard from our customer when they transitioned to this technology is, you know, in the years past, they would have the resources, the people do, you know, maybe do 10 or 20 risk assessments per year, and actually address some of those with some job improvements, because it was so labor-intensive with the training, as well as the assessment time.

And they got back to us after the first month of using the software and said, we've actually assessed every job on our facility because it's so easy to kind of point and click, you know, the video, you know, the automation and the artificial intelligence, you know, does the assessment for you and it's so, so fast, that they were able to do a complete risk profile of all of their manufacturing and lab environments within one month. I mean, that's game-changing.

The second thing is, now you kind of shift how your ergonomics team and your professionals apply their knowledge. You know, prior to this technology so much of your time went into training and went into risk assessments. So, 80% of your time you were doing the quantification of the problem. Now, it's maybe 20% of the time, and now you have this 80% leftover in order to actually make physical change, engage with the operator. You know, this type of technology just encourages employee engagement and it encourages employee engagement in the job improvement process. So, those are two stories that I think the listeners would appreciate.

Meagan: Yeah, that's great Blake. Well, thank you so much for that great explanation of VelocityEHS's Industrial Ergonomics Software. And just shedding a little bit of light on how software technology in general can improve life on the job for pharma plant employees.

Blake: Thanks, Meagan. I really appreciate this opportunity and I hope the listeners gained some new insights.

Meagan: Yeah. Absolutely. You've been listening to a special solution spotlight episode of ''Off Script.'' Thanks so much for joining us, everyone. Stay safe and be well