Modernizing Health and Safety Operations at Specsavers with IoT
Technology Category
- Cybersecurity & Privacy - Security Compliance
- Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Application Development Platforms
Applicable Industries
- Healthcare & Hospitals
- Retail
Applicable Functions
- Quality Assurance
Use Cases
- Onsite Human Safety Management
- Retail Store Automation
About The Customer
Specsavers is one of the world’s leading providers of optometry, audiology and other healthcare services. The company operates more than 900 stores across the UK and Ireland, as well as overseas in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Spain, Australia and New Zealand. Despite its cutting-edge customer-facing technology, the company was in need of support with modernising parts of its health and safety processes across its store estate and corporate offices. The company had already moved its accident reporting online, but was still using outdated methods for other aspects of health and safety compliance.
The Challenge
Specsavers, a leading provider of optometry, audiology, and other healthcare services, was facing a significant challenge in managing its health and safety processes across its vast network of over 900 stores in the UK, Ireland, and other countries. Despite utilizing advanced technology for customer-facing operations, the company was still relying on outdated methods for reporting accidents and issues in its corporate offices and stores. The UK and Ireland branches were using paper diaries to keep track of routine health and safety compliance in areas such as fire alarm and emergency lighting testing, and inspections of optometry and audiology equipment. This method did not provide a central, accurate view of each store’s compliance levels, making it difficult to monitor and act on any health and safety compliance issues unless physically visiting a store. The company had already moved its accident reporting online, creating a mismatch, and there was a desire for health and safety compliance to follow suit.
The Solution
To address this challenge, Specsavers UK and Ireland partnered with Info Exchange to create two separately branded online platforms - the Health and Safety Hub, and the Audiology Operations Portal. The Health and Safety Hub incorporates a real-time, holistic dashboard which shows how many accidents and incidents are being reported, complete with graphics highlighting the most common accidents that are occurring, along with how many stores have completed each of their weekly health and safety checklists. This solution not only boosts staff productivity by eliminating the need to travel to any given store but also ensures accuracy of information relating to accidents, which is crucial for potential litigation. The Audiology Operations Portal ensures that all necessary checks have been carried out on audiology equipment, to ensure that the system records certain criteria required by the NHS. The results of this Portal seamlessly fit into Specsavers’ Health and Safety Hub. The software's ability to automatically remind every store when they need to carry out checks to ensure they have both the correct and sufficient levels of PPE has played a crucial role in ensuring each store is able to remain open as an essential retailer during the pandemic.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
Case Study missing?
Start adding your own!
Register with your work email and create a new case study profile for your business.
Related Case Studies.
Case Study
Hospital Inventory Management
The hospital supply chain team is responsible for ensuring that the right medical supplies are readily available to clinicians when and where needed, and to do so in the most efficient manner possible. However, many of the systems and processes in use at the cancer center for supply chain management were not best suited to support these goals. Barcoding technology, a commonly used method for inventory management of medical supplies, is labor intensive, time consuming, does not provide real-time visibility into inventory levels and can be prone to error. Consequently, the lack of accurate and real-time visibility into inventory levels across multiple supply rooms in multiple hospital facilities creates additional inefficiency in the system causing over-ordering, hoarding, and wasted supplies. Other sources of waste and cost were also identified as candidates for improvement. Existing systems and processes did not provide adequate security for high-cost inventory within the hospital, which was another driver of cost. A lack of visibility into expiration dates for supplies resulted in supplies being wasted due to past expiry dates. Storage of supplies was also a key consideration given the location of the cancer center’s facilities in a dense urban setting, where space is always at a premium. In order to address the challenges outlined above, the hospital sought a solution that would provide real-time inventory information with high levels of accuracy, reduce the level of manual effort required and enable data driven decision making to ensure that the right supplies were readily available to clinicians in the right location at the right time.
Case Study
Improving Production Line Efficiency with Ethernet Micro RTU Controller
Moxa was asked to provide a connectivity solution for one of the world's leading cosmetics companies. This multinational corporation, with retail presence in 130 countries, 23 global braches, and over 66,000 employees, sought to improve the efficiency of their production process by migrating from manual monitoring to an automatic productivity monitoring system. The production line was being monitored by ABB Real-TPI, a factory information system that offers data collection and analysis to improve plant efficiency. Due to software limitations, the customer needed an OPC server and a corresponding I/O solution to collect data from additional sensor devices for the Real-TPI system. The goal is to enable the factory information system to more thoroughly collect data from every corner of the production line. This will improve its ability to measure Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) and translate into increased production efficiencies. System Requirements • Instant status updates while still consuming minimal bandwidth to relieve strain on limited factory networks • Interoperable with ABB Real-TPI • Small form factor appropriate for deployment where space is scarce • Remote software management and configuration to simplify operations
Case Study
Gas Pipeline Monitoring System for Hospitals
This system integrator focuses on providing centralized gas pipeline monitoring systems for hospitals. The service they provide makes it possible for hospitals to reduce both maintenance and labor costs. Since hospitals may not have an existing network suitable for this type of system, GPRS communication provides an easy and ready-to-use solution for remote, distributed monitoring systems System Requirements - GPRS communication - Seamless connection with SCADA software - Simple, front-end control capability - Expandable I/O channels - Combine AI, DI, and DO channels
Case Study
How Sirqul’s IoT Platform is Crafting Carrefour’s New In-Store Experiences
Carrefour Taiwan’s goal is to be completely digital by end of 2018. Out-dated manual methods for analysis and assumptions limited Carrefour’s ability to change the customer experience and were void of real-time decision-making capabilities. Rather than relying solely on sales data, assumptions, and disparate systems, Carrefour Taiwan’s CEO led an initiative to find a connected IoT solution that could give the team the ability to make real-time changes and more informed decisions. Prior to implementing, Carrefour struggled to address their conversion rates and did not have the proper insights into the customer decision-making process nor how to make an immediate impact without losing customer confidence.
