Kiwitron solutions for warehouse safety in the steel industry

Cogne Acciai Speciali is a historic manufacturing company in the steel industry, employing thousands of people. In addition to the Aosta plant, Cogne Acciai Speciali has many other production facilities worldwide. A reality so rich in workers, moving equipment and structure has very high standards regarding safety.

We asked Ettore Bordon, HSE Manager at the Cogne Acciai Speciali plant, how he got in touch with Kiwitron and how this partnership came about.

I personally didn’t know Kiwitron; he introduced us to our supplier, Cappio, following a major modification we made within the plant.

Previously we had a warehouse inside the plant given on loan to Cappio (the transporter), which transports all our finished material outside the plant.

Together with them we decided to move this warehouse outside, to another town-also in the Aosta Valley-but no longer inside the plant.

All changes must be carefully analyzed, especially those concerning occupational health and safety, because-often-all major accidents or injuries arise from unmanaged changes.

I give an example: when you have been used to doing something for a long time and you change it, you don’t think about all the consequences this could create. One of the changes involved some transportation of material from our departments to this new shed, which could no longer be done with another supplier’s means, and Cappio was not equipped with this type of means, which rotate 360 degrees, streamlined, but had to enter the departments with trucks. A department full of machines working and people walking around where trucks come in with poor visibility is clearly a big problem.

KiwiEye to support blind spots

We have unfortunately already seen how many accidents happen in the blind spots of these huge vehicles and how human error is always, alas, possible and difficult to manage. So, in the risk assessment, we had requested Cappio to find systems to nullify this degree of risk.

This is where Kiwitron came in.

Correct. This technological system allows it to help the vehicle operator to have 360-degree visibility and perfect awareness of what is moving around to better manage interference with other people and vehicles within departments.

How does the safety person’s demand for and search for new technologies occur within a steel mill plant?

There are so many channels. First I talk to the people directly concerned, in this case the area attorney and his principals. Then I talked to Cappio and the other vehicle supplier, and it was Cappio who proposed this solution to me.

I am the chairman of the Technical Environment and Safety Committee of AIM, the Italian Association of Meteorology: we do four meetings a year with the HSE managers of the steel mills of Italy, RSPPs or whoever just deals with the environment, and that’s where we network. Twice a year we organize days that we call “touring days,” which are days where in the morning we give training on various topics reported during the previous year at other conferences and in the afternoon we tour the plant hosting the event.

How important is it that we as suppliers do training for you as end customers?

With us, any new business, especially if we are talking about machines and equipment, then involves training by the manufacturer on the users.

We always ask the manufacturer, the installer to train our operators-it is clearly essential.

To date, everything seems to be going very well.

What is the added value of the Kiwitron solutions you went to implement in the plant?

In my opinion, Kiwitron solutions today bring great added value. Such a solution makes it possible to improve communication between operators and visibly decrease the error rate, hence accidents.

It allows us not to employ a person for an activity for which we are not sure he or she can guarantee 100 percent, and it gives us the knowledge and confidence that the possibility of error is virtually nullified.

Are there similar solutions in your industry, have you already tried other solutions that you were not satisfied with?

After meeting you, I proposed to equip all our forklifts with your system.

Why did I prefer Kiwitron? Because Kiwitron technology does not require a tag, and that is very important to me.

To think of equipping all operators with a tag is to get into very sensitive ethical issues. Moreover, a reality like ours has a number of operators circulating, such as visitors, to drivers, and it is difficult to equip them all with tags. Therefore, it would be an ineffective solution.

I hope to be able to use your solution in other situations within our plant as well. We have now included this system in the specifications of those who supply us with forklifts, so the suppliers will have to adapt and supply us with the vehicles already equipped with your solutions.

A question about the near future: how do you see these technologies evolving?

I think they are going to have a big growth because there is just a great need for these systems, also because the fatalities that occur in companies like ours are 80 percent suffered by third-party firms and a good 60 percent by interference.

Talking to people who do the same job as me in other steel companies as well, the need that has emerged is precisely the one just mentioned.

When we got all our maintenance people involved, they got off to a flying start and completed the installation activities even earlier than we thought, because they were really interested in this new technology: there is passion, curiosity, desire to do and I really like that.

So the feeling that there was also when you presented the solution was one of enthusiasm rather than reticence?

There is always a great curiosity about novelty, there are always those who bring up problems, but that is correct, because addressing critical issues helps to reason.

Then you see that the group is all working in the same direction, and you understand that the doubts served to help foresee certain situations that might then arise and then resolve them at the outset.

Now everything is working, I have also been called by other departments who have seen these solutions and have asked to be able to implement them.

It seems to me that another station has already been added, and so I must say that I am satisfied, I am very confident.

What solutions have you implemented?

We implemented something in theory that existed but had not been, quote-unquote, coupled.

We mounted the KiwiCross AI with an anchor. If there are people inside the plant, the moment the truck enters the plant, the device signals the truck that there are people inside. Of course, there is also a traffic light that signals the presence of the people themselves-it was a combination of devices.

KiwiCross AI application example

Giulio Chiaramello, key account manager at Kiwitron, tells us:

we customized the solution for the Cogne plant. It was a bit of a challenge for us, also because it was the first time we were doing this kind of activity on trucks, in this case two Scanias.

We were also able to talk to Scania, they also gave us support, monding a control unit to make the trucks slow down.

As challenging as this activity was, we found people to achieve the goal with.