Since its foundation in 1925, Caterpillar Inc. has had a hand in some of humanity’s greatest accomplishments—from the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing to the ongoing Operation Deep Freeze in Antarctica. As the world’s leading manufacturer of mining and construction equipment, diesel and gas engines, gas turbines, and diesel-electric locomotives, Caterpillar Inc. simply must be running as smoothly and safely as possible at all times. Unsurprisingly, there are tons of moving parts at a corporation as large as Caterpillar, which can complicate matters of safety.
Their Challenge
The workflow at Caterpillar necessitates that members of certain user groups complete their assigned tasks before members of other user groups can complete their work. For example, in order for user technicians to be able to begin any work on a project, their user supervisor must first hold a project kick-off meeting and complete a preliminary project safety assessment.
To guarantee that such procedures are being followed, Doug S., a Health and Safety Coordinator of twelve Caterpillar sites, mandates that Caterpillar employees document every step in their project workflows. Initially, this process was done manually, as paper-based tracking systems appear familiar, cheap, and easy to implement. Unfortunately, beneath this veneer of simplicity lie many inefficiencies and opportunities for unintentional non-compliance.
For Caterpillar, the biggest issue with manual systems is their inability to prevent tasks from being completed out of order. With paper, the only thing stopping an employee from beginning their work without first having completed the necessary safety training is the flip of a page. Doug was in need of a system that makes doing the work of inspections easy, but only once team members are granted access to do said work.
Our Solution
Thanks to years of honing experiences, Smart Safety Pro—a fully digital safety compliance system designed by multiple experts in safety and software—had just the solution readily available.
Using Smart Safety Pro’s software, Caterpillar was able to not only mandate safety training for employees prior to inspections, but also to provide this training anywhere, anytime on the mobile Smart Safety Pro app. What’s more, Smart Safety Pro blocks employees from completing tasks if their superior has not yet fulfilled their responsibilities.
Smart Safety Pro’s system enables Caterpillar to organize inspections and projects, as well as to set specific prerequisites for separate user groups. This system forces compliance, just as Doug was hoping for. Smart Safety Pro’s digital system means that employees physically cannot complete work prematurely or out of order, and that they are able to know when they have been authorized for work instantaneously
What Separates Smart Safety Pro From the Crowd
One of the reasons that Caterpillar chose to work with Smart Safety Pro specifically is because, rather than forcing companies to try to fit the capabilities of its software, Smart Safety Pro allows companies to mold said software to their needs. Because of this, Smart Safety Pro is able to meet the needs of workers on construction sites, manufacturing plants, and anywhere in between.
Product manager Jordan B. and his team are another major draw of Smart Safety Pro. Customers work with the team to adapt Smart Safety Pro’s broad, flexible architecture based on their unique workflow, layout, and goals. According to Doug, whenever there were bumps in the process of setting up Smart Safety Pro for Caterpillar, “the team responded with urgency and resolved the issues in a timely manner,” making Doug and Caterpillar at large “feel like a valued customer.”
Key Features of Smart Safety Pro
- Administration-controlled configuration: With Smart Safety Pro’s highly modifiable system, administrators at Caterpillar are able to generate forms, organize site inspections by project, assign inspections to user groups, and adjust recurrence levels.
- Easy project and file tracking: Administrators obtain visibility of every project and inspection file in their system, each of which is provided with a unique tracking number, allowing them to verify that the right number of inspections are being completed per project.
- Offline capabilities: The Smart Safety Pro app was designed to work with and without Internet service, so users can collect data in field dead zones without worrying about losing their progress.
- Automation: Smart Safety Pro’s digital nature allows it to automate the tracking and saving of answers on inspection forms, the organization of data, and the generation of comprehensive reports.
The Impact
Working with Smart Safety Pro enables everyone at Caterpillar—from user technicians to Health and Safety Coordinators like Doug—to keep changing the world and be effortlessly compliant with federal and industry standards while doing so. With the burden of inspections and manual data analysis removed, employees at Caterpillar are free to spend more time on what really matters: meeting customer needs with the best equipment on the market.
In Doug’s own words, Smart Safety Pro “is working well and getting better every day.”
