With COVID 19 not far behind us, the biggest challenge in the coming months will be to maintain safety distances in companies, especially in factories, where social distancing is the most difficult to respect.
As we see around the world, many companies are experiencing a high rate of contamination.
If a case of COVID is detected in a factory, for example, the facility must be closed for several days and the contact cases isolated, which can affect many employees.
Indeed, within such workplaces, human contacts are numerous.
The current context being already complicated, the closure of a factory can represent considerable costs for companies and put in danger their economic balance.
Zozio, a young company specialized in geolocation services, has developed an innovative solution to protect employees in companies.
This solution, called KYD (Keep Your Distance), aims to prevent contamination clusters and to help respect the rules of distancing in the workplace.
How does it work?
The badge worn by the user issues a real-time alert if employees do not respect the safety distance.
This is possible thanks to the Ultra-Wideband technology which allows to measure the distance between badges in real time.
Measuring the distance between badges allows for contact analysis, but also for flow analysis in order to optimize the maximum number of employees per zone and to effectively enforce sanitary measures.
The badge can also be used to send an alert when the distance is not respected, with a time stamp and identification by badge number guaranteeing the anonymity of its holder.
The strengths of the KYD solution
This badge, made-in-France, guarantees the anonymity of its holder since it is categorized by a unique number.
In the event of contact with a person testing positive for COVID, a notification is sent to the owner.
Thanks to the UWB (Ultra Wide Band) technology, KYD is able to offer an accuracy of up to 10 cm, which makes the solution particularly reliable.
In addition to having an unequalled autonomy (one recharge per week), KYD allows the identification of risk areas (where human flows and exchanges are more important for example), whatever the configuration of the premises, and guarantees the optimization of disinfection operations.
Technologies developed in France
The KYD solution is the result of a partnership between WizziLab and Zozio, designed and developed in France with the support of the French electronics manufacturer, Asteelflash.
WizziLab, specialist in connected objects since 2011, was in charge of the development and hardware design phase of the product. WizziLab was able to rely on its expertise in the low-power DASH7 protocol and Ultra-Wideband (UWB) technologies to achieve the product’s reactivity, autonomy and accuracy objectives, ranging from the decimeter range.
Asteelflash, one of the world’s leading subcontractors in electronics manufacturing and a French group, will manufacture the badge in its French factories.
Asteelflash was able to meet the industrial development challenges of this product, notably by proposing efficient sourcing solutions and developing plastic molds in record time (2 weeks instead of the usual 6 to 8 weeks).
In less than two and a half months, Zozio, WizziLab and Asteelflash were able to set up this large-scale project with the common objective of offering a reliable and competitive French product to large industrial companies as well as to small and medium-sized businesses.
What are the challenges for the future?
In the long term, the startup Zozio has set itself the mission of simplifying the work of operators and increasing industrial productivity by offering intelligent geolocation solutions adapted to the needs of its customers.
These solutions, easy to implement, allow accessible investment costs and optimize management of assets and flows thanks to Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Zozio’s solutions are available to all industry sectors, such as automotive, aerospace, cosmetics, chemical, pharmaceutical, transportation, logistics centers and many others.
Modular and scalable solution
Beyond COVID, KYD badges are scalable and can be reprogrammed to meet new business needs.
For example, for the implementation of Lean strategies, predictive logistics, detection of technical inconsistencies, inventory management, etc.
Thus, managing a health crisis is not incompatible with flow optimization strategies on industrial sites and logistics centers.
Written by Emma Grignard