Through the introduction of a real time location system, South Korean steel manufacturer POSCO is reducing accidents, improving employee and visitor safety and lowering energy consumption.

To ensure the safety of employees and visitors at the plant, POSCO has introduced its u safety management system, which utilizes ultra wideband radio frequency identification tags and interrogators to monitor all areas of the facility. Each person working in or visiting the plant is provided with a helmet fitted with a battery powered RFID tag, allowing managers to quickly locate that individual in the event of a serious accident, such as a fire or gas leak.

Mr Hanku Park, a senior master POSCO certified professional, said that his company previously had no means of tracking employees' locations throughout the factory. He added that "Ensuring worker safety at the plant is vital and we wanted a system that could track workers, visitors and even vehicles to monitor or limit their access to hazardous areas of the plant. We consulted with IBM Korea to find a solution that would best meet our needs. We conducted technical tests on the RTLS system and software that allowed us to determine the distance required between the tag and reader, given the iron and steel present as part of the production process, as well as determines tag and reader accuracy."

POSCO uses Ubisense's RTLS solution, with Series 7000 RFID tags affixed to personnel and equipment. The tags operate on a frequency of 6 to 8 GHz, beaconing once per second. The Series 7000 readers receive the beacons from the tags to determine position, and that information is then transmitted to the LAS middleware over a local area network.

The system can be used to respond to a number of events, including disaster response, accidental fall detection, emergency mustering, safety breach, visitor escort safety breach and worker presence or absence. The project was launched in February 2008, with technology proof-of-concept, design and development, and system testing and deployment. User acceptance testing was completed in March 2009, and the project was subsequently rolled out.

According to Mr Park, with the system successfully deployed at its Pohang mill, POSCO intends to expand its use to other plants as well, such as in Gwangyang, South Korea. The lighting control function is expected to be rolled out at all POSCO facilities. The company is also considering extending the system's use to monitor work in process and asset management.

(Sourced from www.rfidjournal.com)