Business Problem

In a typical manufacturing environment, all work done in a plant has the potential to be hazardous.  Hazards encountered during work in the plant can vary from exposure to flammable materials to severe weather conditions.  When evaluating the safety level for a unit of work, a work permit is needed to evaluate the hazards and associated controls, as well as gather approval signatures from plant management to ensure the safety of the work environment.  The typical problem with this process is that the permits are all paper based and uncontrolled.  There is no way for plant management to track permits, or to run metrics on the number of permits that were approved but were also associated with later incident reports.

To fix this problem, a permit control system is needed to control the creation and processing of work permits.  Typical requirements include:

 

1. Manage the creation and editing of work permit documents
2. Assign a unique identifier to all permits for later recognition
3. Capture permit data for later analysis
4. Control of work process using workflow and lifecycle on permit forms
5. Link auxiliary documents to the permit, such as safety analysis and risk analysis
6. Avoid data entry errors and make filling out the form a user-friendly process
7. Ability to copy a form
8. Ability to print out worksite and control room copies of the permit

Active Wizard Solution

Using the Active Wizard, users are able to create and edit four different types of work permits, plus a Job Safety Analysis form.  The system assigns a unique ID to each form to ensure that it can be easily referenced in the future.  A new search interface (available in the 3.7 release) was created to allow users to search for permits based on ID and/or a number of business-driven attributes.  From the form review screen, users are able to promote the forms through their lifecycle through the Active Wizard, moving a form from the Prepare state through Issued.  All form date is captured in Documentum attributes, which gives administrators the ability to track permits over time.

Work permit forms are only effective for 24 hours after they are issued.  This short duration is due to the fact that hazards, such as weather conditions, can change from day to day.  To address this issue, a form copy feature was also integrated into the Active Wizard to allow users to easily copy a form based on a similar job being performed, or based on a continuation of the previous day’s work.

The TSG OpenOverlay tool was integrated into the Active Wizard to allow users to print out copies of the form for either the Control Room or Work Site.  Based on a selection made by the user, Open Overlay dynamically applies the correct watermark to the PDF, resulting in a clear distinction between the two copies.

Business Impact

• All work permits and associated documents are created and controlled in a Documentum repository, giving administrators the benefit of tracking forms and reporting on permit data
• Helps the business to enhance the safety of the work process in the plant, as well as preventing work stoppages from failed safety and operational audits
• While the client still utilizes a paper-based signature process, this system opens the door to future electronic signatures integrated into a workflow
• Utilizing the Active Form module, the forms are easily filled out with minimal errors from users.  For example, the system automatically chooses the appropriate controls to display based on the selected hazards, preventing the user from selecting an invalid control
• Configurable approach allows the permit forms to change over time