“Vision Zero” is a combination of different approaches with the goal of preventing accidents, injuries and illnesses. This concept has its origins in occupational safety and was first applied to road traffic in Sweden. Germany eventually adopted it as a preventive strategy for statutory occupational safety. All Vision Zero measures are focused on human life and health. The basic assumption is that human error is inevitable. This means that all Vision Zero approaches need to be designed to ensure that human error does not result in life-threatening injuries or illnesses.

Thielo Hammer has been tackling the question of how to improve safety at industrial workplaces, such as in chemical and petrochemical industrial plants or refineries, for over 20 years at Dräger Rental & Safety Services. His focus is on supporting customers during critical work, such as working in containers, during hot work or work in areas exposed to gases. The Head of Product Management knows that the “human factor” plays a decisive role in occupational safety. According to the DEKRA Occupational Safety Report, 80 percent of work accidents or near misses are caused by employee behaviour. “We responded by looking for solutions to close the gaps in behaviour-based occupational safety,” explains Hammer. “The Rental Robot provides the greatest possible transparency regarding compliance with the safety regulations and contributes to further reducing the number of workplace accidents.”

The Rental Robot is the rentable, automated material logistics solution for your safety equipment. Safety equipment such as respiratory protection, gas detectors or explosion-proof cell phones is needed every day at industrial plants. The release and return station provides each registered user with the desired protective equipment and any necessary consumables from its compartments, close to the location of use 24/7, without the need for any personnel to be present. After the devices have been used, they must be checked to ensure that they are working properly for the next use. The Rental Robot 3.0 also takes care of this together with the X-dock and thus ensures that only operational and safe devices can be rented. “This concept boosts occupational safety,” says Hammer with conviction. At the same time, the Rental Robot also increases efficiency in industrial plants as less time and effort is needed to provide the correct safety equipment. On average, operations need 30 percent fewer devices without any loss of efficiency.

The first version of the Rental Robot was launched on the market 12 years ago. Even then, the concept of an automated release and return station for safety equipment, which registers the user data for every rental, met the needs of many customers. Users had to personally register on the Rental Robot before they were able to remove a device from the compartment. The unit stored the details of each user, which device was rented, and when. Whether the user then also carried out the necessary function tests for the next use, as is a daily requirement for gas detectors in accordance with Technical Guideline T021/T023, was a matter of trust. There was no automated feedback to the automatic Dräger X-dock test equipment, which can carry out these function tests today. “The new Rental Robot 3.0 together with the X-dock now lets us automatically combine device and user data,” says Hammer. The integration of the X-dock and the use of the cloud allows reports and warnings to be sent directly by email. This lets those responsible and users immediately see whether the function test has been carried out properly. “This adds a further module to the safety chain,” says Hammer.