Strengthen Warehousing and Logistics Transportation Safety with AI Video Analytics and Cloud-Managed Video 

In today’s fast-paced industrial environments, ensuring employee safety and maintaining compliance can be a complex challenge. With rising injury rates and concerns surrounding criminal proximity to logistics workers, warehousing companies need a solution that can help protect their employees from these threats. Unfortunately, due to the complexity of business operations, security blind spots and weaknesses can be difficult to identify. This necessitates a solution that offers better management of areas where injury or threats to employees may occur. 

To proactively address safety issues and simplify compliance, companies can leverage video analytics through a cloud-managed video platform. This AI-powered technology provides a proactive solution that helps identify unsafe workplace procedures, suspicious activity, and alert on critical incidents for faster response. As well as that, video analytics can streamline investigations for improved resolutions and better collaboration with law enforcement and insurance agencies.  

Key Challenges Impacting Logistics Transportation Safety and Security 

Logistics is a complex industry, with a variety of risks present at nearly every point in the supply chain. Generally speaking, however, most threats to logistics workers take place at distribution centers.

Risks from moving machinery, heavy boxes, and proximity to violent criminals put logistics employees in danger every day on the job. If logistics companies lack a way to effectively manage safety around their operations, they risk the ability to better protect their employees. 

Growing Injury Rates 

Logistics warehouses are physically taxing environments to work in. Constant moving machinery and inventory create busy warehouse floors. Alongside that, numerous employees navigating those floors to lift heavy cargo onto waiting trucks, or to have it moved elsewhere in the warehouse, create plenty of opportunities where injury can occur. 

Due to this risk, the warehousing and transportation industry has seen a growing number of injuries over the past few years; so far, there hasn’t been an adequate response. Overexertion, objects or equipment, and falls/slips/trips are plaguing employees of this industry the most. Businesses are seeking solutions to help protect their employees and improve operations on their warehouse floors. 

There is inherent risk working within the logistics field. With 235,200 cases of non-fatal injuries recorded in 2023, logistics is one of the most dangerous industries to work in. However, many injuries in this field can be avoided with proper observance of safety protocols and proactive monitoring of unsafe areas, such as loading bays or busy warehouse floors. Realistically, that means ensuring the day-to-day operations of a logistics business keep safety at the forefront. 

Vast Parking Lots and Facilities 

Theft, both internal and external, puts a tremendous amount of strain on the logistics industry. Cargo theft, the branch of crime that deals directly with the theft of cargo shipments (often from logistics companies themselves), has become a rampant issue in the past decade. Not only does this directly affect inventory, but cargo theft also puts employees at risk. While most cargo thieves prefer to remain undetected, some may turn to violence to get the cargo they want. For both warehouse workers and drivers, this makes an already demanding job even more stressful, as now these employees must worry about their safety, both at distribution centers and along the supply chain. 

A common blind spot at warehouses where theft can occur is in parking lots surrounding facilities where multiple trucks are parked, either overnight or for days on end. These areas present a tricky problem, as thieves can easily hide from view. For logistics businesses, a solution is needed that can streamline search into these areas to quickly identify past incidents, share it with law enforcement, and offer insights into ways logistics companies can better defend their employees 

3 Powerful Ways AI Video Analytics and Cloud-Managed Surveillance Revolutionize Logistics Safety 

Logistics organizations need a solution that can help them more effectively manage safety and proactively identify risks to their employees for rapid response and streamlined investigations. 

Cloud-managed surveillance paired with video analytics provides logistics companies with powerful features designed to recognize suspicious behaviors, unsafe procedures, and critical incidents. A cloud video platform also allows for powerful reporting tools to fortify safety, as well as streamlined search features and clip sharing so important video can be distributed to law enforcement or insurance agencies quickly. 

Below, we’ll cover a few of the primary ways this advanced technology can fortify business safety. 

1. Identify Safety Hazards 

To improve the overall safety of warehouse facilities and logistics operations, businesses can employ video analytics to alert on critical incidents for proactive response. 

Leverage person detection analytics to alert you when personnel enter areas that are off limits. Apply logic tied to time of day to ensure you’re only alerted when it matters, reducing false alarms for your team. For busy warehouse floors, potential collision risks can be identified by having video analytics alert you when objects are out of place. Any misplaced equipment can also be monitored via object and loitering detection if something is in an area it shouldn’t be. Other incidents can be avoided with alerts based on proximity of persons near dangerous machinery. Video analytics can alert designated members of your team, ensuring action is taken quickly to resolve the issue or aid any employees who may need help. Management can also leverage two-way talk down through their video security platform to communicate with employees on the floor, assess their status, and, if in trouble, let them know help is on the way. 

A cloud-managed video system can also integrate with environmental sensors and other IoT devices around your facilities to detect unsafe environments, including toxic particulates or smoke. Video provides an additional layer of visibility into what is occurring at these areas by providing video verification of these sensor events. 

Collectively, these solutions work together to enable management to make informed decisions on improving warehouse layouts, transportation routes, or operational processes. Processes can be streamlined to not only improve efficiency but, first and foremost, strengthen employee safety. 

2. Streamline Safety Audits Across Your Organization 

When considering managing safety compliance and protocols, visual and other system reports provided by a cloud-managed video platform can help uncover safety issues, while streamlining audits and helping ensure efforts taken around safety are more effective. 

Data visualization of analytic events allows your organization to spot anomalies in day-to-day operations before they become an issue. This allows you to easily review patterns of event activity to better understand your business and enable your team to take action when needed for outlying events. 

Thumbnail reports also provide an easy way for logistics security and operations teams to monitor factory floors, warehouse lines, and parking lots. At a glance, these teams can confirm that processes and employee safety procedures are being upheld. If not, steps can be taken to immediately remedy any issues that arise. Day/night reports provide additional information by comparing side-by-side views of the same camera’s line of sight 12 hours apart. This can help illuminate if there have been any abnormal changes in view and provide insight into what may have caused that change to ensure nothing is missed and video is there when you need it. 

Finally, system health reports help you monitor the status of devices across locations, streamlining security management and reducing burden on IT to maintain those systems. 

3. More Effectively Manage Safety Around Facilities 

Cloud-managed video offers powerful search tools to help logistics businesses better manage safety around their facilities and quickly resolve incidents when they do take place. 

By being able to easily search security video to locate footage of critical incidents. Different event types, including those tied to video analytics or integrated devices, streamline that search so the appropriate video is found quickly. From there, the video can be easily exported and shared to law enforcement or insurance so incidents can be resolved as soon as possible. Visibility into who the clips have been shared with, how many times they’ve been viewed or downloaded, and the ability to manage (and revoke) access to clips at any time further minimizes the time spent managing safety incidents. 

By streamlining the resolution process and more effectively managing safety around your facilities, your team can reduce the time spent on these activities, enabling them to focus more on preventing critical incidents in the future.  

Strengthen Safety in the Logistics Industry with OpenEye Web Services 

OpenEye’s video analytics help enhance logistics processes for improved employee safety. AI-powered video analytics in OpenEye Web Services (OWS) help teams identify hazards, streamline safety audits, and more effectively respond to and manage incidents around facilities. These analytics include: 

• Person and Vehicle 

• Loitering 

• Line Crossing and Intrusion 

OpenEye Web Services’ alerts, search, and reporting tools keep you and your team in the know so you can better protect your team. Streamline video export and sharing helps improve facility safety by enabling faster resolutions so security teams can focus more on preventing future incidents. The OWS open ecosystem also allows logistics businesses to integrate additional security solutions including environmental sensors, access control, third-party cameras, and other systems into OpenEye’s cloud-managed video platform for a complete security solution. 

To learn more about how OWS can better safeguard your organization and team with AI-powered video analytics, book a demo today.