Arc flash is a dangerous type of electrical accident caused when current jumps between voltage levels in an unintended way. The result is a powerful explosion that can lead to serious consequences. These are five important things to know about arc flash:
Human Error Is the Most Common Cause of Arc Flash
Some estimates say that about two-thirds of all arc flash accidents are caused by human error. The most common of these situations is when a worker doesn’t follow the protocol for ensuring equipment isn’t carrying a charge. When most people make a mistake at their job, they can just fix it. Arc flash doesn’t give you a second chance. This is an unfortunate reality of working with electrical equipment.
While mistakes on the worker’s part—either due to fatigue or simple oversight—are the most prevalent causes for arc flash, there are several other factors that can lead to it. Faulty components are another major risk. It’s important for enterprises to update any equipment that doesn’t adhere to OSHA standards. You can easily get any replacement parts from a company like Schneider Electric, which will help reduce the likelihood of arc flash.
Arc Flash Can Generate Temperatures Hotter Than the Surface of the Sun
Some people simply don’t understand the magnitude of an arc flash explosion. Electrical shock actually isn’t the primary danger of arc flash; burns are. On average, there’s more than one death every day associated with arc flash burns in the United States. Thousands are injured every year by these burns.
You Need to Wear Special Clothing to Protect Against Arc Flash
Based on the previous point, it’s pretty obvious you don’t want to enter a situation where arc flash might occur wearing shorts and flip-flops. It’s essential for people working on electrical equipment to wear arc flash-protective clothing.
Even though having the proper clothes can help prevent burns, it doesn’t protect workers from all the dangers of arc flash. Hearing loss is a major concern in these accidents, as well as projectiles coming from the explosion area. It’s important for everyone within the immediate area of a potential arc flash site to take precaution.
Several Arc Flash Accidents Happen Every Day in the United States
Arc flash isn’t some once-in-a-lifetime event that you don’t really need to take seriously. This phenomenon happens multiple times every day in the U.S. All organizations that use electrical equipment need to consider the risks of arc flash.
The potential damage caused by arc flash can be devastating to individuals and organizations alike. Severe burns, broken bones, deafness, blindness, and death are all possible with arc flash. Even in the fortunate circumstances where no one is hurt in an arc flash explosion, it can still cause massive damage to equipment.
Arc Flash Is Almost Always Preventable
As mentioned earlier, human error is the most common culprit of arc flash accidents. While this can seem like a negative thing, there’s actually a positive element to it. Since mistakes are by far the most-cited reason for arc flash, there are steps that can be taken in order to reduce the likelihood of these incidents.
Better training for workers is one of the best ways to reduce the likelihood of arc flash. Make sure anyone working on electrical equipment has a thorough understanding of how to avoid an accident. Fatigue is one of the elements that leads to human error. Implementing protocol that limits workers from having to get into situations where they’re prone to making mistakes can help mitigate arc flash. It’s also management’s role to stay on top of updating and replacing equipment as necessary.
No one wants to deal with arc flash or its aftermath. But this is just a reality when it comes to working with electrical systems. Knowing more about arc flash, however, can help to lower its occurrence.
Yan Lida, President of Huawei Enterprise Business, Huawei Connect 2017 (credit: Huawei)
We live in an era of unprecedented technological innovation.
According to Forrester Research, only 12% of the Fortune 500 companies from 1955 remain Fortune 500 companies today.
Why?
Most likely because, as Forrester research discovered, only 27% of businesses have a coherent digital transformation strategy for creating customer value in place. Yet, many companies are placing digital transformation at the center of their strategies through 2020.
Over the last few years, digital transformation has become an industry megatrend. Legacy enterprises are forced to embrace this critical shift out of fear of becoming obsolete.
Innovation and growth are no longer optional to the enterprise.
Today, enterprises use ICT technology to improve working efficiency, create business innovations, and provide better customer service.
For many of these Fortune 500 companies, the challenge is to develop new business models that increase connection and engagement. What’s needed is a digital transformation platform that connects intelligence, data, and devices, enabling them to increase engagement with partners and develop applications that foster innovation.
Cloud computing, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and other new technologies are driving the human society into the smart era. The most striking feature of a smart society is the connection and fusion of the physical world and the digital world. The problems of the physical world are now being solved by the digital world.
As enterprises are constantly striving to attain new business value, the speed of innovation is crucial.
Companies need to be swift, agile and leverage all aspects of technological innovation. A truly digital enterprise uses emerging technologies as a strategic effort to go leaner, focus on agile business processes and enhance the business analytics of the enterprise. A digital enterprise relentlessly searches out, identifies and develops new digital business models, always ensuring that customers and employees are at the center of its innovation.
Digital Transformation
Digital innovation has become an essential catalyst and a driving force of economic growth. It’s a journey, not a sprint.
Designing a digital transformation framework for success is focused on innovation and attaining new business value, aimed at a creating an optimal user experience. To the point that the needs of the end-user need to be integrated into the service model. Consumers today, demand a faster, simpler, and enhanced digital experience that provides the best product and combines it with stellar service and most advanced technology.
The Digital Transformation Journey for Enterprises
Digital transformation is a massive undertaking, especially for larger, established companies. When done right, it will result in a business that is more aligned with customer demands and resilient in the fast-moving digital future.
Embracing digital transformation at the enterprise level requires a strategic approach that factors in all of the goals, people, technologies and required integration to form a proper strategy.
Digital Transformation, Disrupt and Innovate
A core function of any business is to continually advance and improve its operations, products, and services. Enterprises that adhere to a digital transformation framework are not only focused on improving, they are the key drivers of innovation and disruption. Equipped with disruptive and innovative strategies, these companies can compete in today’s fast-paced market that is being driven by consumer demands, new technologies, and new business models.
Why Embark in Digital Transformation?
Many legacy enterprises have built their business on certain methods of operation. It is these operating systems that have enabled the company to prosper and survive until today. The digital realities of today, however, are forcing these companies to reconsider and reimagine the fundamental systems that have been the keys to their success. The technological environment is changing, highlighting how ill-equipped these companies are to adapt and change.
Speed is essential in digital transformation.
While the speed of digital transformation may vary with industry, stagnation is the antithesis of the digital mindset. A company maintaining a static mindset in the digital era is paving their path to failure.
With external pressures – customer demands, emerging technologies, lean startups and disruptive business models- pushing the business towards innovation, the classic methods of operation are no longer delivering the expected results. As the impetus for change increases the need to design a strategic path towards digital transformation becomes inevitable.
While many companies may opt to slowly tweak specific inefficiencies, a true digital transformation requires a revolutionary approach. An all-encompassing digital revolution can revitalize an enterprise and pave the road to future success.
A digital transformation framework will guide the leaders and direct the business towards a path of progress. Businesses need to be in a state of constant evolution. Building a momentum and a rhythm reflects a shift in the mindset. It is a sign of a new reality and creates a paradigm shift for the entire industry.
Breaking the Silos
Digital transformation with its customer-centric marketing and business processes requires the ability to work across business verticals and silos. In fact, digital transformation focuses on cross-vertical collaboration, restructuring the organization to create methods that break down the silos. In a digitally focused enterprise, the goal is to encourage cross-department interface and to create an environment that is fertile for consumer-focused innovation.
Huawei: Strategic Digital Transformation Partner
Huawei Connect, Shanghai 2017
Over the past six years, Huawei has quickly developed into a global leading digital transformation facilitators. The rapidly changing digital landscape has enabled Huawei to take advantage of the new realities by providing new ICT solutions to customers, creating best practices for digital transformation, public safety, finance, electricity, transportation, education, and media.
Before enterprises choose an appropriate digital transformation strategy, IT and CT are now converging and transforming enterprises. There is no single technology alone capable to execute the digital transformation.
What is different about Huawei’s ecosystem?
Yan Lida, Enterprise Business Group, Huawei Connect 2017 (credit: Huawei)
During my experience at Huawei Connect 2017, I was able to learn about some of the company’s strategies and gain insights into how Huawei is developing this platform and ecosystem.
During his keynote speech, Yan Lida, President of Huawei Enterprise Business, highlighted Huawei’s ecosystem that is based on three primary characteristics:
Huawei wants to become the customers’ most trusted partner. Huawei’s commercial model chooses to rely on the monetization of technology and services; it does not monetize user data. This is the biggest difference between Huawei and traditional Internet companies.
Huawei abides by its own business boundaries and is committed to becoming a platform for the platform. There are many companies that through their own experience in a specific industry have transformed into an enabler platform for that industry. It is very common to see companies such as GE, which is now providing an industrial cloud platform for the aviation and manufacturing industries. Huawei believes that it must create an open, secure, and reliable ICT infrastructure platform within its business boundaries to become the platform for its customers and partners’ platforms. Huawei’s platform is a cloud-pipe-device collaboration full-stack ICT platform; it provides all-in-one ICT services for customers and partners. The upper layer platform does not need to bother with the lower layer’s complex software and hardware systems; it can focus on its own service optimization and innovation.
Huawei is committed to becoming the ecosystem’s soil (the platform) to help customers grow quickly. This is why its plan for developers is called the ‘Developer Enablement Plan.’ This platform is the presence of Huawei in over 170 countries around the world. Developers and partners could use this platform for their global marketing and services.
In order to enrich this ecosystem, Huawei has laid out the plan of establishing OpenLabs, which cover all areas of jointed innovation with customers and partners across industries: public safety, finance, power electric, and manufacturing.
In the next three years, Huawei will continue to invest $200 million to build and operate OpenLabs (currently 13 and grow to 20) in Asia, Europe, Middle East and Americas.
Huawei provides a one-stop cloud-side collaboration infrastructure platform that integrates all new ICT technologies to help businesses stay competitive in the digital age. Huawei’s business has achieved rapid growth via industry-leading customization solutions for government and associated industries.
By carrying out joint innovation with partners centering around the business needs of customers, Huawei focuses on creating a win-win ecosystem.
In the transformation process, customers, partners, and Huawei each have their own unique advantages: customers understand their businesses, partners know how to transform the business needs of customers into industry-relevant applications, and Huawei knows how to utilize hardware and software ICT infrastructures to deliver effective business support to customers.
Partnering on the Digital Journey
In the digital transformation journey, Huawei has embraced the vision that partnership and collaboration will be a bigger driving force than the technology itself. By partnering and guiding its customers in their digital transformation journeys, Huawei is strategically guiding each enterprise to their destination. The goal is to be connected, intelligent and cloud-based.
Huawei is uniquely positioned to take enterprises on this journey because the company is able to provide a holistic suite of solutions from devices, to infrastructure, to services based in the cloud equipped with Artificial Intelligent capabilities.
According to Mr. Lida, “Huawei’s business positioning is to be a pioneer of digital social and intelligent social development processes, the industry’s digital enabler, and the best partner. In 2016, Huawei’s Enterprise business grasped the historical opportunities of digital transformation by focusing on infrastructure”.
Road to Digital Transformation Isn’t Smooth
Of course, the road of digital transformation from traditional ICT manufacturers to the enterprise market isn’t easy, even for Huawei.
Backed by six years of hard work, Huawei focused its ICT infrastructure and carefully chose partners with complementary strengths. By working together with its partners, Huawei has been able to deliver key industries with true digital transformation. The combined results have been to help public safety and government, finance, energy, and transportation enterprises to achieve digital transformation while still generating sales revenue of 40.7 billion yuan (about $5.9 billion) – a 47% increase from 2011 when the business was formed.
Smart Cities
In the field of smart cities, Huawei delivers ultra-wideband network, cloud computing, large data, Internet of Things and other facilities and technologies for cities to create a “nervous system” that enables all things to be interconnected in a smart way. Huawei has also been widely recognized for their participation in the smart city project through the “one cloud- two network- three platform”.
During the 2016 Barcelona Global Smart City Expo, Huawei was also awarded the “Southern Innovation Award” for the construction of a digital health system in Kenya.
To date, Huawei Smart City solutions have been successfully applied to more than 40 countries around the world and more than 100 cities.
Huawei Smart City (credit: Huawei)
At HUAWEI CONNECT 2017, Huawei and the Shandong Weifang Municipal Government ushered in a new generation of information technology. By including Internet of Things, cloud computing, and large data, Huawei is creating a NB-IoT city network and establishing the first city level based on the company’s OceanConnect IoT platform. Huawei has also used the Internet of Things to integrate various types of sensing devices to achieve data collection and management.
Public Security
In the field of public security, Huawei has continued to apply new ICT technologies such as cloud computing, large data, mobile broadband cluster, Internet of Things and artificial intelligence to the public security field. By working together with partners to build solutions to help cities achieve digital transformation, public security has improved and cities become more secure. Currently, Huawei’s safe city solution has served 80 countries, more than 200 cities and more than 800 million people in Europe, Africa, Asia Pacific and Latin America.
Technology and the Competition
As traditional industries enter a critical period of digital transformation to drive business innovation and growth, the cloud is at the foundation for enterprise digitization. To meet this growing demand, Huawei has launched a number of industry-leading ICT products and solutions.
Huawei IT products continue to innovate thereby expanding their role as a digital transformation leader.
With Huawei’s IT products and solutions serving more than 170 countries and regions worldwide, the company is setting a new standard for the future of digital innovation and outperforming its competition.
So far, 197 of the top Fortune 500 companies and 45 of the top 100 companies have chosen Huawei as their digital transformation partner. This list includes SAP, Accenture, Deutsche Telekom, Volkswagen, Oracle, Honeywell, GM, ABB, Intel, Sony, the Russian Federal Savings Bank and more.
At this point, it looks like HP is really geared up towards their long-awaited debut of the WebOS Touchpad device, which has been recently made into a quick hands-on video that shows a little about the capabilities of the company’s upcoming 10-inch tablet. In that same period, the Touchpad seems to be able handling very smoothly powerful enterprise apps such as Citrix and eDrawings Viewer, while at the same time, running day-to-day tasks like sending emails or surfing the net are far easier than expected. Need some more steps to prove this? Hit the jump and see for yourselves.
Fujitsu is no stranger to the world of portable devices. As a matter of fact, the company has already released a few of them during the last few months. The latest one, which doesn’t have an official title yet, is said to arrive with a 10.1-inch touchscreen, powered by a Windows 7 platform along with Intel’s new Oak Trail Atom Z670 processor that is capable in providing low battery consumption for a long period of use. Besides that, the 1.5 pound tablet boasts 2GB of RAM, removal battery pack and a pair of VGA webcams, one on each side. Software wise, the device sports a new breed of layer that Fujitsu skinned atop of the Windows 7 OS, but that’s probably the only thing that the company was willing to share at the moment and frankly, we need to know more before committing our limited financial resources. In any case, availability is expected for Q2 of this year, so stay tuned for plenty more to come.
Update: Now thatFujitsu’s 10-inch mystery tablet is finally making its way out to the market, we’re glad to learn that the Windows 7-powered device was finally given a name – and is now known as the Stylistic Q550. And while we’re still unfamiliar with price and availability details, other specs include this aforementioned Oak Trail processor, along with smartcard slot, front and rear cameras, 32GB / 64GB SSD storage at your choice, USB hub, optional 3G connectivity and fingerprint reader for security log. Hit the break for a quick introduction video.
It’s not that we haven’t seen it before, it just seems to be on the rebound and perhaps in a more tangible shot. And whether it’s the real upcoming Windows 7-powered 8.9-inch HP slate or not, it still boasts a very responsive touchscreen display and a smooth flash support. Hardware appears to remain pretty much the same and a detailed hands-on video is just behind the bottom spot.
Upgrade: Looks like x313xkillax, the guy who made the first hands-on preview (attached after the break) is back with yet another video (this time even more detailed) that is comprehensively displaying the alleged HP slate. Basically, according to his second video, we’re looking at a 1.86GHz Intel Atom Z540 tablet which boasts an 8.9-inch WSVGA touchscreen along with a Broadcom Crystal HD Enhanced Video accelerator, 2GB DDR2 RAM, 60GB of storage, SD card reader, 802.11b/g/n WiFi connectivity, Bluetooth, two different webcams (3mp rear and 1.3mp up front) and a 2-Cell 30WHr Lithium-ion battery pack. As mentioned, Windows 7 Home Premium is running the entire operation on board and the tablet itself features a nice docking station and while browsing, even a pinch-to-zoom support. Hit the jump to see the action.
So there’s not really much to say about NEC and its new seven-inch LifeTouch Android tablet, besides the fact it boasts an ARM Cortex A8 processor, runs an Android 2.1 OS under the lid and scheduled for release in Japan somewhere around October. Apparently, the new slate supports both landscape and portrait view (in case you’d like to read some e-books) and said to arrive fully customized, mainly for enterprise purposes. Design wise…well, you’ll have to decide for yourselves on this one. At the mean time, make sure you check out the video after the break.
