Mitigate Technology Risk and Ensure Safety in Emerging Tech

New technologies emerge in our lives every day: AI, drones, machine learning, 3D printers, and self-driving vehicles. Industry 5.0 is emerging while Industry 4.0 is still ushering in radical business changes, and there are even solutions for easily developing new technologies without the need for high-end hardware and software. Emerging tech features new materials, new inventions, and new use cases—and new safety risks. Drones could fall and hit someone, a factory robot’s arm could fatally strike a worker, 3D printers could catch fire, and self-driving cars could cause disaster on the road. Given all this technology risk, how do businesses navigate their safety responsibilities for emerging tech? This article will explore the different areas to consider and how to combat them.

Reliability in emerging tech can be a daunting challenge to overcome. How can you know how a new device will perform in the field when it’s barely reached the field or has yet to? How can you plan for all its use cases, since any number of things could happen with this device? Will a drone’s parts deteriorate and break due to sun exposure, for example? Are automated factory processes being monitored for deteriorating performance? Neglecting reliability can lead an organisation to public disaster when products fail, though extreme concern for reliability can also deter a company from adopting new technology, and perhaps missing business opportunities.

To address these concerns, start with a Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA). You may not be able to predict all the scenarios and backgrounds for the causes of component failures, but you can learn its failure modes: the specific ways that material can break or that processes can fail to deliver their outputs. An FMEA is similar to a technology risk assessment but focuses on the breakpoints of the design itself rather than operational safety hazards. You can apply FMEA to both physical products and industrial processes.

To perform an FMEA, start by analysing all the ways the design could fail and the causes and effects of those failures. This could be materials breaking due to temperature or stress conditions, or an automated air quality control system creating hazardous health environments. Next, assess each failure mode’s severity, likelihood, and whether it can be detected and acted on before it happens. Based on this, alter the design or otherwise mitigate the technology risk as needed. Documented proof of robust FMEA can be a useful thing to show customers who want to buy products made using strong quality assurance systems.

Another reliability analysis measure is the Highly Accelerated Life Test (HALT). This tests a device to extremely high-frequency uses to stimulate it failing due to fatigue. This is often done under extreme temperatures or vibrations to further push the device past its limits. HALT lets you identify failure modes you may have been unaware of, so you have a chance to make the design more robust.

You can also leverage new technology to predict how your own new technology will perform in the field. IIoT sensors and machine learning allow predictive maintenance: analysing machines’ performance to predict when they’ll fail so you can act to prevent that. Monitoring industrial machinery vibration is a major part of this.

Overall, don’t rush to adopt new technologies or materials because they’re trendy. Be thoughtful in whether they’re truly the most reliable choice for the business challenge you want to solve.

Innovation and emerging tech move lightning-fast, and the temptation to rush to get to market can be great, especially in the hyper-competitive tech world. It has been argued that technology moves too fast for science to hold it accountable in terms of safety.

Traditional scientific research, along with government policy, can move too slowly to keep up with the recent pace of new technology, and that pace is only increasing with the emergence of AI. Solid conclusions about a product’s or process’ safety implications take considerable testing time and resources, and when even newer tech comes out, it can render this research obsolete by the time it’s published. Tech companies also have a history of poor transparency in their internal testing, compounding the problem.

Closing these testing gaps to truly address new technology risk takes proactive efforts from the manufacturer:

• Providing funding and facilities to adequately test new products and research their safety implications
• Waiting to release these products until the research is complete
• Releasing and scaling in phases to collect field safety data and iterating on the design to further improve it
• Being publicly transparent in these testing efforts
• Developing industry safety regulations (or welcoming government ones)

Neglecting safety responsibilities can lead a business to disastrous and numerous safety incidents, public investigations, and loss of reputation. Robust, thorough safety testing is essential for emerging tech.

Despite gaps in testing expectations, though, technology companies don’t lack regulations to meet. Emerging tech has expanded connectivity across the globe, and the globe has equally broad expectations for it. There are myriad industry regulations to manage compliance for; they differ across regions of the world, and they’re continually changing to keep up with technology’s pace of change.

Compliance challenges in terms of safety concerns in emerging tech include:

• AI: Governments, regulators, and industry standards organisations are struggling to come up with regulations for artificial intelligence as its advances leap ahead. New questions for how to manage this emerge every day, such as medical professionals relying on AI for diagnoses, regular consumers using it for health advice, or the extreme risks of AI-controlled armed drones. See the AI Playbook for the UK Government.
• Operational resilience: If critical infrastructure relies on emerging tech, it needs to have operational resilience to ensure it works as intended during things like natural disasters. The EU has DORA for this, for example.
• Managing subcontractors: Jurisdictions with operational resilience regulations may have additional regulations for cases of companies relying on subcontractors or sub-subcontractors to meet these critical infrastructure safety implications.

Here are some good practices companies can use to succeed in this regulatory environment:

• Be aware of the regulations that apply to the parts of the world in which they do business
• Build strong teams and procedures meant to proactively prepare for and adapt to new regulations
• Participate in developing new industry standards
• Build compliance into your product design and company operations from the start
• Be transparent in your compliance efforts, which can build consumer trust

A technology risk assessment is an essential tool in assessing the safety implications of innovations. The basic framework of a classic risk assessment remains relevant to emerging tech:

1. Identify all the possible hazards the device presents
2. Assess each risk of each hazard in terms of severity and probability
3. Implement controls for each risk to mitigate or eliminate it
4. Document these risk controls
5. Regularly review operational data to assess the success of these controls

As discussed for component reliability, this is challenging for brand-new technology since you can’t foresee all the ways something new could be used. FMEA and HALT data can be useful in a risk assessment, but it needs to extend more broadly to consider how technology could specifically harm the public or the environment. A new technology risk assessment will take imagination and wisdom: analysing recent public technology failures and what can be learned from them.

Some other things to consider for a new technology risk assessment are:

• Will this new technology interact with other new technology that in turn needs a risk assessment?
• Are your company’s current risk assessment procedures robust and agile enough to apply to emerging tech?
• Do your teams need new training on risk assessments suited for the modern tech world?
• Are you collecting enough data about the effectiveness of your risk controls?
• Can you act and adapt quickly enough to emerging incidents that have immediate implications for this technology’s risks?
• Are your vendors and other third parties equally engaged enough in these concepts to see these risk controls through?

With these points in mind, you can plan new technology and the use of it to seize business advantages while keeping your users safe.

Above all, it is the business’ responsibility to proactively make safety protocols for the emerging technologies it chooses to adopt. This will keep their workplace, the public, and the environment safe while preserving the company’s reputation.

Some ways to plan safety procedures around the use of emerging tech include:

• Applying risk assessments to workplace safety just as thoroughly as to how the public will use new products
• Training staff on how to use these new technologies, especially in understanding their new concepts
• Emphasising that automation doesn’t automatically absolve personnel of responsibilities
• Reviewing and reassessing your safety protocols and safety data even more regularly to stay ahead of how these new technologies are working out

Additionally, emerging tech itself offers some ways to improve safety protocols:

• Use augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR) to train people on tech safety in a controlled, safe, simulated environment, so that they can be readily familiar with safety issues when they do come up
• Use IIoT technology to predict machine failures before they happen and implement proactive repairs. IIoT sensors even exist for PPE to monitor workers’ health in hazardous conditions
• Use blockchain to archive indisputable, tamperproof safety data in real time

With all these factors in mind, you can develop, implement, and benefit from emerging tech while meeting all responsibilities for maintaining safety. RS has a range of product lines in the emerging tech world, including our STEM electronic components. Explore our solutions today.