CASE STUDY

Delivering global business value through safety

Customer: Schneider Electric

Market sector: Energy Management and Digital Automation

Solution: Proxxi Voltage

Core client challenges: Electrical Injuries

Reducing injuries across a global organization

Even the best safety cultures are susceptible to human error

Schneider Electric is a French multinational power management company with over 135,000  employees and $34B in revenue. They specialize in digital automation and energy management by combining energy technologies, real-time automation, software, and services. Schneider Electric serves customers in five broad markets including Buildings, Industries, Data Centers, Infrastructures, Homes & Residential.  

Schneider Electric operates in 100+ countries, with 162 production factories, 84 distribution centers, and about 800 commercial offices and R&D laboratories.  Health and safety risks are greatest at heavy equipment manufacturing sites, or during electrical tests. The risk is also concentrated on service teams, as their activity is performed at customer sites, and in the frequent presence of powered electrical systems.

Schneider Electric has already implemented best practices around electrical safety and additional innovations such as digital safety checklists. Despite these efforts, they were still seeing electrical injuries across their workforce. The majority of Schneider’s workplace injuries are due to electrical hazards. Electrical injuries primarily occur when there has been human error:

  • A failure to properly de-energize electrical equipment

  • A miscommunication amongst team members about the electrical state

  • Confusion around which equipment has been de-energized

  • Inaccurate documentation of electrical schematics

  • Backfeed in the electrical system

In their 2021 annual report, Schneider identified over 300,000 ‘safety opportunities’ in the past year. 

They found that many of these injuries, when examined in their investigations, could have been prevented if only there had been a means of notifying the worker prior to coming into contact with the energized electrical equipment.

A mission to reduce injuries and save lives

Proxxi Voltage outperforms

In response to these injuries and in line with its commitment to safety, Schneider Electric committed at the highest level of the organization to prevent these avoidable injuries going forward. One part of this initiative was to commit to having personal voltage detectors on all field service workers.

Schneider conducted an extensive search in the product space for these sensors. After evaluating over a dozen potential solutions, they conducted a 4 month head-to-head trial with a small set of the leading products. This included evaluating these products in a wide range of work settings with different teams, use cases, and voltage environments.

“We have looked at all the alternatives in the market. Nothing comes close to Proxxi.”

 Ray Palama, Regional Service Director, Schneider Electric

Improving overall safety through sensors and analytics

Proxxi’s Electrical Safety Platform provides leading indicators to increase safety

Schneider Electric found that Voltage by Proxxi performed best across all dimensions of their evaluation. 

Specifically, the wrist-worn sensor was more accurate and reliable for warning their teams at 600 volts and lower.
This was critically important because it covers the vast majority of their work and is where they have seen the most injuries and near-misses.

Additionally, the executive and management teams found Voltage analytics data extremely valuable. The alert event data allowed them to see in real time and historically how their teams were interacting with energized equipment. Using this data, they could identify higher risk teams, take action, and prevent injuries before they occurred. They also found Voltage’s usage monitoring critical for keeping track of adoption and compliance, ensuring that all workers are adhering to safety best practices.

In Schneider’s annual stakeholder reporting, they produce the Trust Report. As part of their goal in driving global business value, they are striving to reduce the medical incidence rate from a baseline of 0.79 in 2019 to 0.38 by 2025. While significant progress has been made to 0.58 in 2022, Proxxi Voltage helps Schneider get even closer to their goal of reducing injuries. 

“Safety is a never-ending journey towards excellence. Schneider Electric’s vision is for all employees and contractors to work in a safe and healthy workplace, so they can perform to their full potential, positively impacting safety for its customers, and therefore always returning home safely to their family.”

 Schneider Electric Trust Report 2022