~ Honoured for its tech innovations ‘POD concept’ and ‘Digital Covid Safety Tracks’ to mitigate the COVID-19 risks to ensure workforce safety and business continuity ~

Mumbai : Tata Steel has been recognised for its Safety and Heath Excellence initiatives by World Steel Association (worldsteel) under the category ‘Occupational Health Management’. The initiatives include two technology driven innovative concepts deployed at the Company’s manufacturing units – ‘POD concept’ and ‘Digital Covid Safety Tracks’. These applications ensured workforce safety and business continuity by mitigating COVID-19 risks and were rapidly implemented via the COVID Impact Centre.

Sanjiv Paul, Vice President (Safety Health & Sustainability), Tata Steel, said: “We are honoured to receive Safety & Health Recognition 2021 by worldsteel. At Tata Steel, we have implemented multiple tech innovations and leveraged our digital transformation journey to pursue workforce safety and business sustainability, aided by agile decision-making. This recognition will further motivate us to pursue excellence and prepare for future.”

On behalf of Tata Steel, Neeraj Sinha, Chief Safety, Tata Steel, received the award during the Safety & Health Committee Meeting in Brussels, Belgium on November 18, 2021.

The POD, a workforce modularisation concept, introduced self-sufficient groups comprising operations and maintenance personnel, including contractors, with self-contained skill sets to perform specific jobs. The concept is built on a foundation of protocols, namely Entry-Exit norms, Shift Operating norms, and POD Breach norms, which constitute the key guiding principles.

Digital Covid Safety Tracks successfully contained the spread of COVID-19 via real-time monitoring and compliance to standard operating guidelines. The tracks are broadly classified under three areas – Risk Mitigation, Risk Intelligence and Compliance. Three of the 14 digital tracks, namely COVID-19 Declaration, Risk Profiling and Risk Detection at Gate collectively mitigated the risk of a high-risk person entering the company’s gates. A Proximity Analysis track was developed to identify high-risk cases at the workplace.

Apart from these initiatives, the Company introduced beacon & RFID based ‘Suraksha Card’ (Safety Card) for contact tracing of all employees within the plant, including work sites. For white collar employees who were not carrying the beacon & RFID based ‘Suraksha Card’, the company used Mobile device Bluetooth technology to function as a BLE tracker inside factory premises and integrated this with the IT systems for contact tracing inside the Plant. The Company developed a ‘Suraksha App’, installed on Android/iOS devices, to serve this purpose.

World Steel Association also recognised Tata Steel Europe (Europe and USA) under ‘Occupational safety management’ for its zero-harm logistics.