How Essar Steel used IoT for contract workforce management

Essar Steel India is an integrated steel producer with an annual production capacity of 10 million tonnes. Essar Steel’s manufacturing facility comprises ore beneficiation, pellet making, iron making, steel making, and downstreamfacilities including cold rolling mill, galvanising, pre-coated facility, steel processing facility, extra wide plate mill and a pipe mill. The steel plant located  at Hazira has modern infrastructure like a power plant and a port that can handle 30 million tonne cargo annually.

The area is a Mega Steel Plant at Hazira, Surat, covering approximately 400 hectares and is accessed through five gates. There are a total of about 12000 such workmen who are indirectly employed in the steel plant for various jobs through contractors. The business problem Essar was facing was the monitoring of the‘check-in’ and ‘check-out’ time of the contract workforce. The engagement of contract workforce inside the steel plant is work/job oriented and hence can be for a variable time period (number of days) depending upon the work type. The company could not keep a direct recording of the various contractor teams, as their constituents are dynamics.

Considering the dynamic nature of the contractor teams, a real time people counting under various plants is very important. Multiple registrations of constituents at various levels were creating duplicate identities and thus giving false people count and identifications.  Also such events create an advantage for blacklisted people to change identity and register with fake identity, thus posing a serious challenge for the security personnel in maintaining peace and harmony in and around the premises. Tracking workmen entering and exiting the large area was a challenge without proper processes and a well crafted and executed technology solution.

Assigning contracts to contractors (industry experts) and tracking the workmen  requirements in terms of turnouts on any given day was also a big challenge, especially with a manual Gatepass process. The Contract Cell also needed to staff contracts with the right workmen and had to rely solely on business user inputs for knowing the contractor / workmen performance during the period of their service.  In such cases trending contractor and their workmen performance was also not practically possible.

Manually Tracking contractor compliances in terms of wage payments, ESIC and PF payments is mandatory process as per contract labour law.  Managing non compliant contractors and their workers was a huge  and almost impossible challenge with the manual processes.  Tracking labour license and workmen compensation policy expiry was another challenge.  As per safety compliance, restricting workmen with an expired medical and safety certificate is mandatory. But manual tracking failed to achieve such regulatory norms. Managing workmen attrition and upgrading and tracking individual skills was also a big challenge in the manual process.

The IoT solution

Essar resorted to FlamencoTech solutions to solve the challenges. FlamencoTech is an IoT Soutions company offering solutions for Smart Worksites, Smart Buildings, Smart Healthcare and Smart Retail.  Our unique value is a combination of domain and process expertise, our own IoT Platform, the Digital Blanket, several pre-packaged solutions along with an Service Management Overlay to create unique highly scalable solutions to solve real-life problems.

This Work Associate ID or WAID project involved extensive process analysis, requirement analysis, Use Case development, Stakeholder approvals, hardware and software integration, operational process modification, middleware customization and cloud hosting, work-associate registration of over 12000 users, training of Contractors, Work Associates and Stakeholders, Work Associate mentoring, extensive testing and correction, pilot run and then finally production.

The WAID solution developed on FlamencoTech’s IoT platform, the Digital Blanket, has automated the existing processes to make them better and faster and also helped modify some of the existing processes and has helped the Company improve its services and reduce its costs and has the potential of deeply impacting the business performance on a continual basis.

Integrating and digitizing various processes in contract labour assisted Essar Steel to overcome all of the above challenges. Associating / mapping entities like contractors, contracts, Work Associates, skills, shifs and also the automation of the various processes like enrollment, allocation, authorization, authentication, compliance, medical & health records and police verification helped in tracking and managing issues related to contract labour law, multiple employment, duplicate identities etc. and eliminated paperwork.

The entire WAID solution runs on Microsoft Azure Cloud with local authentication. The Work Associate entries and exits are tracked and authenticated locally and synced to the Microsoft Azure Cloud in near real-time. The WAID application with its reports and dashboards are accessed by the Essar Stakeholders and the Contractors through a secure web portal.

The Work Associate authentication is based on RFID and Biometric (Fingerprint & IRIS) and leverages FlamencoTech’s scaleble IoT Platform, Digital Blanket. All the data in the cloud is encrypted and the data transfer is scured through 256 bit SSL. Thus the deployment is very secure, safe and also ensures highest availability, performance and reliability. This colution can scale to several ghundred throusand work associates as the need arises.

The Digital Gatepass along with automation is a significant step towards a transparent work culture. The Work Associate enrolment (Biometric) creates an unique identity for each Work Associate. In addition, associating contractors and contracts with the skilled associates and their current and updated skills and certifications avoids violations at various levels. The WAID system also assists Essar stakeholders to simplify the authorization process and thus eliminate paperwork and also duplicity of work while ensuring the environment, safety, health and industrial compliances.

Once a Gatepass is approved by all stakeholders, the Work Associates are allowed entry to the premises under a valid Gatepass for a configurable period or duration. The  Work Associate now can leverage technology enhancements using Biometric, RFID, and Barcode etc to mark their presence in Essar premises. The technology helps to track real time people counts, long absenteeism (absconding cases), overstay at work, late arrivals at work, early goings etc. Trending and patterns assists future improvisations in processes and thus improving productivity continuously.  Reports, analytic dashboards, notification and alerts allows quick responses/action against violations and analytics helps in intelligent decision making.

The deployment architecture allows reliable functionality even during multiple points of failure.

The Results

The WAID system brings in complete control and automation; there is data available with extensive transaction details, which allows extraction of several metrics across various dimensions. The data is now available to multiple stakeholders across the business process as per their roles and authorization rules. In past 3 years, Essar Steel has successfully leveraged benefits from the WAID solution deployed at their Hazira Campus. Essar Steel is tracking and managing contract labour compliance,  safety and medical compliance, wage payments, indutrial compliance  and ESIC PF payments. Automation of processes have eliminated duplicacy of work thus improving employee performance. Reducing the paper usage has assisted Essar Steel in reducing the Carbon Footprint. Digitizing various documents have made documentation reliable and handy. The Digital Gatepass process has reduced the authorization timelines and assisted third party contractors to deploy skilled resources transparently.  Our WAID Solution has assisted Essar Steel in getting real time head counts, actual duration on premises and controlling authorized people movements. Centralised work associate database has assisted Essar security to gather information related to work associate identity, education, qualification, experience, reference etc.

There are several benefits that have been evaluated during project approval, including reduction of labor costs through time management & control, work contract mapping with workmen skills, time based payments compared to earlier paper certifications, regularization of wage payments and medical checks, safety regulation monitoring and weeding out irregularities which were observed in the past.

Increased Efficiencies through workflows, contractor freedom to engage & disengage valid workman into his team, wage Payment for workmen based on valid attendance proof, mapping of contractor, workmen, time period, statutory compliances  & payments, database of past employment records and skills of workmen, debarring ‘blacklisted’ workmen permanently, real time checks on overstaying inside the plant and overtime work and security validation on entry and exit gates.

“At the outset let me place on record that WAID has changed our outlook towards management of Contractual labour. The system covers the entire process of management of labour to include their skills, regulatory issues, time & shift management & of course their Safety & Security at work place. An associate does not have to worry about his attendance or entitlements. Contractor can’t manipulate the same. He is assured of his PF and ESIC contributions being regularly paid in time. Then he doesn’t have to carry so many cards, papers or credentials with him. One WAID card speaks all about his medical, safety, IR clearances and due date thereof, his PF and ESIC no and references, etc. etc. These are some of the reasons why an associate feels connected with the system and the Company he works for. And once he feels connected everyday you could watch him confidently and cheerfully walking in for his job. He is motivated to give his 100%. He seeks more responsibilities and challenges. He does not have to depend on anybody for most of his job related benefits but on his WAID card and WAID system. That associates have developed a bond with the company is reflected in their increased productivity, reduced absenteeism and downfall in their attrition rate. At the end of the day it is good to see smiling faces exiting ESSAR Steel’s Security gates,” said Col. Rakesh Vasal

Head Security & Fire, Essar Group, Hazira.