Manufacturing Case Study | Connected Safety

Case Study

See how a 3M manufacturing plant in Hutchinson, Minnesota, streamlined preventive maintenance inspections while boosting detail and depth.

Reduce paperwork, improve preventive maintenance

Before it switched to SIM, this 1.5 million square foot plant conducted thousands of monthly safety inspections using inefficient paper logs. Tracking Preventative Maintenance inspections (PM's) required printing, stapling and sorting paperwork prior to the inspections. Time-consuming administrative steps bogged down the inspection process. And despite all the steps, the completed logs could have used more details and better consistency — and once filed, were difficult to retrieve.

"With Connected Safety, it has cut down our time [spent on inspections] by one-third."

—Dale Zieman, 3M Material Handling Systems Technician

Greater efficiency is only the beginning

Safety & Inspection Manager streamlines the inspection process. It identifies each individual station, and applies a number and RFID tag. Technicians receive a list of inspection locations and expectations via a hand-held device or smartphone. With this list and RFID tagged equipment, they’re able to perform tasks with greater accountability and verification.

And they capture more standardized data. SIM is programmed with questions specific to each safety check. Users can expand on inspection metrics by adding real-time photos and comments to document historical context for why a particular inspection passed or failed.
Benefits beyond the inspection

SIM enhances monitoring and communication. It supports alerts for monitoring situations and gives users a clear way to refer issues to other responsible parties. Repair requests and maintenance issues are easily shared across areas and departments, complete with detailed data and photos for further clarification. Quick notification helps them reach closure or fix an issue much faster.

"We've become more efficient without taking any shortcuts. And we've actually made the process much more robust and timely."

—Curtis Hughes, 3M Production Supervisor

Return to Connected Safety overview