Enabling enhanced safety and productivity at the workplace with GearUP

​​Industries that rely on extensive manual work face are keen on ensuring workers' safety, enhancing productivity, and improving connectivity across rugged geographical terrains. Workers operating in industries like oil and gas, mining, and construction, often work in isolated situations without access to conventional means of communication. They may not be able to seek help immediately during an emergency. Furthermore, tracking their health status and geographical location may not always be possible. Such situations may jeopardize the workers' safety and productivity, making it difficult for the company to ensure their well-being.

HARMAN Life-ware seeks to address this challenge with the Samsung Galaxy Watch, a wearable hardware device, and the GearUP platform that helps closely monitors workers' safety, location, and work progress in a challenging work environment.

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Prioritize the safety of workers​

GearUP is the platform that operates in tandem with the watch that can be worn at tough jobs across terrains and used with hand-gloves. GearUP displays the key health vitals of the workers, like their heart rate, step count, and sleep patterns, on the dashboard that helps the company monitor their health status in real-time. In case of an accident, a worker can use the man-down feature on the device to send an SOS message to the supervisor with a single touch on the device.

Monitor the worker's location and movements

A key part of working in hazardous geographical terrains is ensuring that the workers move within safe zones or their movements be closely monitored for their safety if they are moving into dangerous locations. GearUP empowers the supervisors working on-site with geofencing capabilities. The supervisor can create a virtual safe perimeter within the work environment, and the device can alert the worker and the supervisor if they move beyond the safe area. The location tracking feature can also help the supervisor quickly locate the worker in an emergency or accident.

Enhance worker's productivity

GearUP ensures that everyone at the workplace remains connected through the wearable device. The supervisor can use GearUP to broadcast messages to the workers, assign tasks, direct their work remotely, and remain in constant touch with them. The device allows easy bi-directional communication between the workers and the supervisor through voice and text messages that help in tracking the work progress. A well-established line of communication leads to improved productivity, prevents wastage of time, and removes errors arising out of miscommunication.

No worker left alone

Manual work in difficult terrains often involves lone workers in isolated conditions like a mine-shaft or underwater repairs. GearUP can play a key role in ensuring that each movement is monitored, they remain connected, and help is available immediately when required. GearUP can be deployed for the safety and well-being of entire teams as well as individuals, with the ability to scale on demand.​

Simplify workplace management

The GearUP dashboard simplifies managing the workplace and improves efficiency through visually presenting the relevant information to the supervisors. The easy-to-use dashboard provides the supervisors with a single, unified view of all the relevant metrics and insights that they need to allocate tasks, communicate with the teams and act quickly when needed. The dashboard can be used to create and manage different user groups and enable coordination between multiple teams.​

The technology that drives GearUP

Samsung GearUP integrates with three technology components to enable end-to-end safety and productivity solutions for the business:

1. Samsung GearUP Application – The GearUP app enables the watch users to receive time-sensitive alerts and tasks. The GearUP web portal helps supervisors and admins monitor and manage the user and group data.
2. Knox Configuration for Wearables – To ensure the security of data and information being shared through the wearable device, the IT admins can configure the settings and profile for each user using the defense-grade secure Samsung Knox platform.

Samsung Galaxy Watch – ​The GearUP features are accessible through the Samsung Galaxy Watch built with robust material to be worn at tough jobs. The watch has been designed for durability and can be used even with the gloves on, allowing users to be flexible while keeping them safe.

A complex problem meets a simple solution

The GearUP solution addresses critical problems of difficult workplaces through a watch that monitors health vitals, tracks worker location, helps manage work assignments, and keeps them connected. It builds a safer ecosystem that can be easily monitored through a dashboard and enable quick action in real-time. GearUP creates a secure platform for sharing vital data that can help optimize work allocation, streamline workflow, and improve coordination between multiple teams operating at a difficult location. By implementing the GearUP solutions, industries can quickly put enhanced safety features in place, improve productivity, and promote safe habits without revamping their entire workflow.

A glimpse into the future evolution of GearUP

As part of HARMAN Life-ware, GearUP is on an evolutionary path towards securing workers' safety through additional features. The future versions of the platform seek to integrate features that can monitor the dehydration levels of workers and keep track of their fatigue levels. This feature would help supervisors optimize work assignments and provide care for the workers to improve their efficiency. Auto fall detection is another feature that would play an important role in the future wherein the watch would be able to detect if a worker has had a fall and send out a rescue alert even if the worker loses consciousness. GearUP will play a critical role in the industry by enhancing the safety measures at the workplace without compromising the worker's dexterity or maneuverability.