Academic literature on the topic 'Free RTOS-open-source Real-time Operating System'

To minimise development costs and enhance dependability, modern embedded system development is increasingly emphasising on software modularity and reuse. Microcontrollers are extensively employed in embedded applications that have a very specific and specialised job to complete. The embedded applications are always resource constraint which requires efficient utilization of available resources. A Real Time Operating System (RTOS) is frequently used in this context to plan task execution as well as enable intertask communication and synchronisation. This paper provides the survey of different RTOS available in market and their applications. Several open source RTOS such as Free RTOS, VxWorks, SmallRTOS and TinyOS are compared with respect to the scheduling algorithms used.

Web analytics is also known as cloud analytics which helps to display the information regarding site metrics from massive data. This can be achieved in two ways via the user’s web browser such as statistical and visualization of a particular digital web based interface. This paper explores high level digital archiving software by integration of DSpace with web analytics popular tool Piwik. The paper discusses to create a single window web analytic interface to represent the user log and present the DSpace Usage. For this the researchers select DSpace, an open source software as it is free and popular. They integrate DSpace software with Piwik web analytic tool. Piwik, a web analytic interface tool has been chosen due to its successful integration with DSpace and it is also a free web analytics tool. The whole integration is being performed in Ubuntu operating system due to its reliability and good rate of performance. After successful integration of DSpace with Piwik in Ubuntu Operating System, researchers found that there are multiple colourful link icons showing the different community, sub-community, collection and metadata. It will also display statistical visual graph showing unique visitors, average visit duration, page views, downloads, average generation time page views, unique page views total searches on your website, unique keywords downloads, etc. Through this web analytic interface, DSpace usage may be measured easily and the users’ trend at present will be displayed to rectify any demerits behind this.

Planning is one of the cornerstones of autonomous robot navigation. In this paper we introduce an open source planner called “OpenPlanner” for mobile robot navigation, composed of a global path planner, a behavior state generator and a local planner. OpenPlanner requires a map and a goal position to compute a global path and execute it while avoiding obstacles. It can also trigger behaviors, such as stopping at traffic lights. The global planner generates smooth, global paths to be used as a reference, after considering traffic costs annotated in the map. The local planner generates smooth, obstacle-free local trajectories which are used by a trajectory tracker to achieve low level control. The behavior state generator handles situations such as path tracking, object following, obstacle avoidance, emergency stopping, stopping at stop signs and traffic light negotiation. OpenPlanner is evaluated in simulation and field experimentation using a non-holonomic Ackerman steering-based mobile robot. Results from simulation and field experimentation indicate that OpenPlanner can generate global and local paths dynamically, navigate smoothly through a highly dynamic environments and operate reliably in real time. OpenPlanner has been implemented in the Autoware open source autonomous driving framework’s Robot Operating System (ROS).

In this study, a remote authentication dial in user service (RADIUS) server was implemented, which offers a wireless security method based on registering users authorized to use the network. For this, a computer with 4GB of RAM and a fourth-generation i3 processor was used, mounted on the Ubuntu Server 18.04 operating system and using the free RADIUS open-source software. This server was connected to the network through the TL-WR940N router using the AES encryption method and the WPA2 – Enterprise wireless security protocol, which allows a RADIUS server to authenticate wireless users. Evaluating this method with three registered users, two of them administrators, and one guest, and a total of 8 wireless devices, the experimental results showed that, for the five failed attempts to enter the network, the RADIUS server was able to identify them with an accuracy of 100% in real-time. In addition, the two administrators' correct identification and subsequent access were achieved; one used the same credential to have another device connected to the network, so an identified user can connect to more than one device without creating other credentials. Finally, this security method was compared to WPA2 Personal for 4 hours, where it was verified that the RADIUS server maintains a maximum of 3 devices connected, while the second method allowed the entry of any device, whether or not it was foreign to the network, showing that the RADIUS server is a robust method with great potential to protect wireless networks.

DSCBlocks is an open-source platform in hardware and software developed in JavaFX, which is focused on learning embedded systems through Digital Signal Controllers (DSCs). These devices are employed in industrial and educational sectors due to their robustness, number of peripherals, processing speed, scalability and versatility. The platform uses graphical blocks designed in Google’s tool Blockly that can be used to build different Algorithm Visualizations (AVs). Afterwards, the algorithms are converted in real-time to C language, according to the specifications of the compiler for the DSCs (XC16) and they can be downloaded in one of the two models of development board for the dsPIC 33FJ128GP804 and dsPIC 33FJ128MC802. The main aim of the platform is to provide a flexible environment, drawing on the educational advantages of the AVs with different aspects concerning the embedded systems, such as declaration of variables and functions, configuration of ports and peripherals, handling of Real-Time Operating System (RTOS), interrupts, among others, that are employed in several fields such as robotics, control, instrumentation, etc. In addition, some experiments that were designed in the platform are presented in the manuscript. The educational methodology and the assessment provided by the students (n = 30) suggest that the platform is suitable and reliable to learn concepts relating to embedded systems.

The development of photovoltaic (PV) technology is now a reality. The inclusion of lithium-ion batteries in grid-connected PV systems is growing, and the sharp drop in prices for these batteries will enable their use in applications such as PV water pumping schemes (PVWPS). A technical solution for the monitoring and tracking of PV systems is shown in this work, and a novel quasi-real-time monitoring system for a PVWPS with a Li-ion battery is proposed in which open-source Internet of Things (IoT) tools are used. The purpose of the monitoring system is to provide a useful tool for the operation, management, and development of these facilities. The experimental facility used to test the monitoring system includes a 2.4 kWpk photovoltaic field, a 3.6 kVA hybrid inverter, a 3.3 kWh/3 kW lithium-ion battery, a 2.2 kVA variable speed driver, and a 1.5 kW submersible pump. To address this study, data acquisition is performed using commercial hardware solutions that communicate using a Modbus-RTU protocol over an RS485 bus and open software. A Raspberry Pi is used in the data gateway stage, including a PM2 free open-source process manager to increase the robustness and reliability of the monitoring system. Data storage is performed in a server using InfluxDB for open-source database storage and Grafana as open-source data visualization software. Data processing is complemented with a configurable data exporter program that enables users to select and copy the data stored in InfluxDB. Excel or .csv files can be created that include the desired variables with a defined time interval and with the desired data granularity. Finally, the initial results of the monitoring system are presented, and the possible uses of the acquired data and potential users of the system are identified and described.

Android is a relatively new operating system that has become very popular in the mobile device market in a short time. Operating system developers must adhere to the following basic requirements: the new platform must be based on open standards, which will reduce development costs and provide mobile application developers with access to all system functions to create applications. One of the main advantages of the Android platform is its transparency. The Android operating system is open source and free. This allows users to access the source code and understand how application properties and functions are implemented. This article describes the software, structure, functionality, and scope of the client-server application for personnel selection created on the Android platform.

Motion control education in engineering requires hands-on experiments to catch the concept of feedback control, but experimental apparatus for motion control experiments is expensive, complex in mechanism and is hard to use it in general. In this paper, we develop an easy-to-use and economic experimental apparatus for motion control education using an open-source free operation system LINUX and a free real-time kernel RTAI. The developed apparatus is reliable in mechanical structure, and fast enough to realize 100 microsecond sampling time for real-time control purpose, and so it can test conventional PID control logics, various input shaping control logics and advanced motion control logics with cheap prices. The validity of the developed motion control apparatus is demonstrated by testing P, PD control logics and ZV input shapers experimentally.

This design, based on Android mobile development platform, uses Java language development, making the system have good portability and scalability. Sina micro-blog Android SDK provides third-party twitter application with API invoking service, in which document is easy to use, making the third-party micro-blog client not need to understand the complex validation and API calls process and share text or multimedia information to sina micro-blog.Micro - blog, namely the micro blog, is open Internet social services with the rise of Web 2.0, which allows users to update their status with brief text at any time and place, the length of each message within 140 words, and supports the publication of the images, audio, video and other multimedia. Each user is not only the creator of the micro content, is also the disseminator and distributors of micro content. Compared with the traditional blog, the admittance threshold of micro-blog is lower, and the originality and interactivity of instant messaging are stronger.Android is open source mobile operating system developed by Google and based on Linux platform. It includes operating system, user interface and applications-- all the required software in the mobile phone work. Fast development of the Android operating system mainly profits to a free, open source and good industry operating strategy.

This thesis is about techniques for proving the functional correctness of Abstract Data Type (ADT) implementations. We provide a framework for proving the functional correctness of imperative language implementations of ADTs, using a theory of refinement. We develop a theory of refinement to reason about both declarative and imperative language implementations of ADTs. Our theory facilitates compositional reasoning about complex implementations that may use several layers of sub-ADTs. Based on our theory of refinement, we propose a methodology for proving the functional correctness of an existing imperative language implementation of an ADT. We propose a mechanizable translation from an abstract model in the Z language to an abstract implementation in VCC’s ghost language. Then we present a technique to carry out the refinement checks completely within the VCC tool. We apply our proposed methodology to prove the functional correctness of the scheduling-related functionality of FreeRTOS, a popular open-source real-time operating system. We focused on the scheduler-related functionality, found major deviations from the intended behavior, and did a machine-checked proof of the correctness of the fixed code. We also present an efficient way to phrase the refinement conditions in VCC, which considerably improves VCC’s performance. We evaluated this technique on a simplified version of FreeRTOS which we constructed for this verification exercise. Using our efficient approach, VCC always terminates and leads to a reduction of over 90% in the total time taken by a naive check, when evaluated on this case-study.

This thesis is about techniques for proving the functional correctness of Abstract Data Type (ADT) implementations. We provide a framework for proving the functional correctness of imperative language implementations of ADTs, using a theory of refinement. We develop a theory of refinement to reason about both declarative and imperative language implementations of ADTs. Our theory facilitates compositional reasoning about complex implementations that may use several layers of sub-ADTs. Based on our theory of refinement, we propose a methodology for proving the functional correctness of an existing imperative language implementation of an ADT. We propose a mechanizable translation from an abstract model in the Z language to an abstract implementation in VCC’s ghost language. Then we present a technique to carry out the refinement checks completely within the VCC tool. We apply our proposed methodology to prove the functional correctness of the scheduling-related functionality of FreeRTOS, a popular open-source real-time operating system. We focused on the scheduler-related functionality, found major deviations from the intended behavior, and did a machine-checked proof of the correctness of the fixed code. We also present an efficient way to phrase the refinement conditions in VCC, which considerably improves VCC’s performance. We evaluated this technique on a simplified version of FreeRTOS which we constructed for this verification exercise. Using our efficient approach, VCC always terminates and leads to a reduction of over 90% in the total time taken by a naive check, when evaluated on this case-study.

Examples of the value that can be created and captured through crowdsourcing go back to at least 1714, when the UK used crowdsourcing to solve the Longitude Problem, obtaining a solution that would enable the UK to become the dominant maritime force of its time. Today, Wikipedia uses crowds to provide entries for the world’s largest and free encyclopedia. Partly fueled by the value that can be created and captured through crowdsourcing, interest in researching the phenomenon has been remarkable. For example, the Best Paper Awards in 2012 for a record-setting three journals—the Academy of Management Review, Journal of Product Innovation Management, and Academy of Management Perspectives—were about crowdsourcing. In spite of the interest in crowdsourcing—or perhaps because of it—research on the phenomenon has been conducted in different research silos within the fields of management (from strategy to finance to operations to information systems), biology, communications, computer science, economics, political science, among others. In these silos, crowdsourcing takes names such as broadcast search, innovation tournaments, crowdfunding, community innovation, distributed innovation, collective intelligence, open source, crowdpower, and even open innovation. The book aims to assemble papers from as many of these silos as possible since the ultimate potential of crowdsourcing research is likely to be attained only by bridging them. The papers provide a systematic overview of the research on crowdsourcing from different fields based on a more encompassing definition of the concept, its difference for innovation, and its value for both the private and public sectors.

This chapter first provides an overview with examples of what neural networks (NN), machine learning (ML), and artificial intelligence (AI) are and their applications in biomedical and business situations. The characteristics of 29 types of neural networks are provided including their distinctive graphical illustrations. A survey of current open-source software (OSS) for neural networks, neural network software available for free trail download for limited time use, and open-source software (OSS) for machine learning (ML) are provided. Characteristics of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies for machine learning available as open source are discussed. Illustrations of applications of neural networks, machine learning, and artificial intelligence are presented as used in the daily operations of a large internationally-based software company for optimal configuration of their Helix Data Capacity system.

Linux is a version of the Unix operating system distributed according to the open source model. Programmers are free to adapt the source code for their purposes, but are required to make their modifications or enhancements available as open source software as well. This model has fostered the widespread adoption of Linux for typical Unix server and workstation roles, and also in more arcane applications such as embedded or real-time computing. Embedded applications typically run in small physical and computing footprints, usually without fragile peripherals like hard disk drives. Special configurations are required to support these limited environments. Real-time applications require guarantees that tasks will execute within their deadlines, something not possible in general with the normal Linux scheduler. Real-time extensions to Linux enable deterministic scheduling, at task periods at tens of microseconds. This paper describes embedded and real-time Linux, and an application for distributed control of a Stewart Platform cable robot. Special Linux configuration requirements are detailed, and the architecture for teleoperated control of the cable robot is presented, with emphasis on the resolved-rate control of the suspended platform.

The amount of data that can be gathered from a machining process is often misunderstood, and even if these data are collected, they are frequently underutilized. Intelligent uses of data collected from a manufacturing operation can lead to increased productivity and lower costs. While some large-scale manufacturers have developed custom solutions for data collection from their machine tools, small- and medium-size enterprises need efficient and easily deployable methods for data collection and analysis. This paper presents three broad solutions to data collection from machine tools, all of which rely on the open-source and royalty-free MTConnect protocol: the first is a machine monitoring dashboard based on Microsoft Excel; the second is an open source solution using Python and MTConnect; and the third is a cloud-based system using Google Sheets. Time studies are performed on these systems to determine their capability to gather near real-time data from a machining process.

Abstract Most of Oman's southern fields are produced by beam-pumps which are installed in approximately 2,000 wells. Globally beam pumps remain an extremely popular choice for secondary lift. Identification and diagnosis of beam pumps performance using dynamometer cards (dynocards) is an expensive human visual interpretation process that requires both significant labor time and deep expertise in the production technology domain. The team tasked with developing an improved diagnostic method had three goals: 1) use open-source analytics, 2) develop a machine learning application (ML) to solve business challenges and finally 3) foster solutions with significant value investment ratio (VIR). In this case, a proof-of-concept application was developed to automatically screen beam pump dynocards and identify abnormalities undetected by conventional monitoring systems such as electrical related failures causing improper operation of the well, leading to deferment, undetected by conventional monitoring systems, and/or mechanical damage. An analytics minimum viable product (MVP) was developed for pattern recognition that significantly assisted in automating (analysis of a 100 hundred wells with real-time data in less than 1 second) the visual interpretation process, increasing efficiency, and reducing maintenance activities due to missed early diagnosis. With the system, an analysis of 100 wells with real-time data was performed in less than a minute. The system detects current and future abnormal conditions that cause improper operation of the artificial system to deferment and potentially to mechanical damage. This new system identifies and highlights these wells so that operations and maintenance staff can focus their attention where it is really needed, improving their workflows and decision making. This paper outlines how applying ML along with the scaled agility methodology enabled the operator to develop an MVP and diagnose abnormalities on daily basis not raised by any other system. Of the 100 wells in the selected field approximately 10% were identified with clear failures. This translated to an approximate ~5 % improvement in lead indicator (prior to issues) detection projecting ~2.5 million USD in efficiencies and deferment reduction. There was no CAPEX cost as the team developed this entirely on open-source platforms that were license free and independent without needing third-party application or resources.

Real-Time Operating Systems (RTOS) have their own modules that need to be executed to manage system resources and such modules add overhead to task response times. FreeRTOS is used for experimental purposes since its is a widely used open-source RTOS. This work presents the investigation of two important sources of overhead: Function Tick, a FreeRTOS time marker, and the Context Switch between tasks. In this paper we also describe a model for reducing Tick analysis pessimism due to its temporal variation. Experiments measuring the execution time of Tick and Context Switch on ARM-Cortex M4 microprocessor were made to present the Best-Case Execution Time and the Worst-Case Execution time within a periodic task scenario. Measurements are used to validate the analytic models.

With the capability of burning a variety of fossil fuels, giving high thermal efficiency, and operating with low emissions, the gas turbine is becoming a major prime-mover for a wide spectrum of applications. Almost three decades ago two experimental projects were undertaken in which gas turbines were actually operated with heat from nuclear reactors. In retrospect, these systems were ahead of their time in terms of technology readiness, and prospects of the practical coupling of a gas turbine with a nuclear heat source towards the realization of a high efficiency, pollutant free, dry-cooled power plant has remained a long-term goal, which has been periodically studied in the last twenty years. Technology advancements in both high temperature gas-cooled reactors, and gas turbines now make the concept of a nuclear gas turbine plant realizable. Two possible plant concepts are highlighted in this paper, (1) a direct cycle system involving the integration of a closed-cycle helium gas turbine with a modular high temperature gas cooled reactor (MHTGR), and (2) the utilization of a conventional and proven combined cycle gas turbine, again with the MHTGR, but now involving the use of secondary (helium) and tertiary (air) loops. The open cycle system is more equipment intensive and places demanding requirements on the very high temperature heat exchangers, but has the merit of being able to utilize a conventional combined cycle turbo-generator set. In this paper both power plant concepts are put into perspective in terms of categorizing the most suitable applications, highlighting their major features and characteristics, and identifying the technology requirements. The author would like to dedicate this paper to the late Professor Karl Bammert who actively supported deployment of the closed-cycle gas turbine for several decades with a variety of heat sources including fossil, solar, and nuclear systems.

The project proposes a lightweight packet filter in a Real-Time Operating System (RTOS), aiming to provide an additional security layer to embedded systems, allowing the users to create their security policies through the filtering process of the ingress network packets. The iplite firewall was implemented on NuttX OS based on the best practices of the Linux Netfilter firewall and consists basically of two parts: an application on user space, homonymously called iplite, which serves to provide the user CLI, besides a module on kernel space, netfilterlite, responsible for providing the APIs. As an open-source project, our solution allows the reproducibility of the experiments and the firewall core adaptation to other operating systems.

Abstract Under increasingly volatile market conditions, operators face pressure to increase performance and reduce costs through standardization of engineering, operations, services and equipment. To this effect, an operator has redefined the way it reports onsite operations through the development of a standardized set of reporting activity codes, designed as the backbone of a standardized and digital well design and execution process. The operator recognizes the value of industry wide standardization of fit-for-purpose operations codes and offers to donate the codes to the Open Subsurface Data Universe (OSDU) project. Reporting of well activities with free text descriptions and classifications in 15-minute intervals is a common practice in well operations. The reports have traditionally informed a variety of stakeholders on operations. With a rise of analytics tools and increasingly interconnected digital systems, operators now potentially have millions of hours of classified activity data at their fingertips, with an enormous potential to improve planning and predictability of new operations. With an increased use of data comes an awareness of poor data quality that eliminates performance gains from the data collection efforts. This work describes new concepts that helped to redefine the well activity reporting code set. An interdisciplinary team worked on defining a new operations code set for the requirements of digitized operations reporting and analysis as well as facilitating industry wide data exchange. The new codes were defined based on desired outcomes for data quality, performance analysis, automated key performance indicators (KPIs), insights from manual offset analysis, interdisciplinary interfaces and integrations with a digital well design process. In addition to breakdown of time spent on specific operations, the concepts focus on measuring performance of planned activities only. Thousands of combinations of these codes were redefined drawing on historic examples and engineering expertise from a set of activities across all types of well operations. The effort yielded significant improvements in data quality during reporting through simplification of the coding system and assigning codes to operations in the planning stages of the well construction process to enable the rig team to report actual operations against the plan. Good data quality and well-defined codes in turn enabled calculating KPIs automatically from the data. The standardized operations code set presents a novel way of defining operations codes for requirements beyond reporting, but with digitalization, automation and well design in mind. In addition, the operator offers to donate the set to the industry to lay the foundation for an open-source environment that enables digital technologies to flourish. A copy of the full code set is attached to the publication of this paper.

This paper presents a case study of designing and using an Internet Banking Web application. Its goal is the online learning of administration and deployment of a virtual e-banking system. The application is developed using a three-tier architecture using Apache, PHP and MySQL. The application has all the functionalities of an actual e-banking real-life system. In addition, the paper focuses on highlighting the security problems that may occur and proposes solutions for them. For app implementation the WAMP (Windows, Apache, MySQL and PHP) system was used. Apache is an open source HTTP Server having the following main features: it allows server side programming, virtual hosting and especially the fact that it can be dynamically added modules to extend its functionality (feature that are seized in the paper). MySQL was chosen because it is the best known and widespread database management system. PHP was chosen because of its main advantages: simplicity, efficiency and flexibility. The application was developed using object-oriented programming. This application is the foundation for creating e-learning content to study the management systems of virtual banking. The application was implemented as an independent module into the online e-learning platform called Easy-Learning (an original product of the Department of Applied Electronics and Information Engineering from the University Politehnica of Bucharest). After testing the app, students suggested some improvements, such as real-time validation of user input or centralization of accounts statement, which was taken into account in completing the application. Two MySQL databases are used in this application: the database that stores all user information and account information, and the internal database for token used for authentication. Normally, each token ought to have its own database, but for simplicity a common database for all tokens was used. The implementation solution is that of a virtual event-based token and not time-based token, due to its advantages: server synchronization using an incremental counter, incrementing the counter is not performed without user’s intervention, there is no need for server timing synchronization, well-known cryptographic algorithms are used, and it does not require entering a PIN code for activation (as in the case of hardware token). The administrator has a specific menu, more complex compared to users’ menu. The administrator has additional rights, such as viewing, adding and deleting users, creating their accounts, and the ability to create a backup of the database tables and their restoration. The administrator is the only one that can add or delete users; there is no ability for users to register themselves in order to use the e-banking services. The administrator has access to the user menu, but not vice versa. From the administrator's point of view, analyzing user activity is easily performed using the menu of viewing the user operations history. This way, the administrator can oversee if a user has completed the system requirements or has experienced difficulties in carrying out banking operations. Also, the administrator can modify the user accounts balance when it is needed and can unlock user accounts experiencing authentication problems. From the user point of view, the application offers the following available financial operations: viewing accounts, opening or liquidation of deposits, paying bills or transfers between accounts, and foreign exchange. Currency exchange is updated following the rating of the National Bank of Romania, and this is a strong point of application. The web application allows users to access virtual Internet Banking accounts similar to real-life bank accounts and to accomplish financial transactions in a secure environment. There are multiple security filters, as well as financial operations that customers can achieve online. To improve user experience, a real-time validation of user input data is performed in order to inform the users when placing data in a non-specific format. Another advantage of the app is that all the IT tools and technologies used are freeware software. Overall, a free, interactive application is obtained, where the users can learn and practice in a virtual environment banking operations and procedures, and the administrator has all the necessary means to supervise and manage the whole process of learning and practical application of knowledge acquired.

"Software, including open-source software, is transforming the automotive industry. The Zephyr Project RTOS aims to be the first open-source real time operating system to achieve functional safety certifications making it applicable for use in automotive embedded systems. In terms of connectivity, Zephyr supports among others Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, IP, Ethernet and CAN. With the recent developments of cybersecurity standards and regulations such as “ISO/SAE 21434 Cybersecurity Engineering” and “UN Regulation 155 Cybersecurity”, it becomes paramount for automotive organizations to consider employing various cybersecurity activities in the development process. For example, to detect unknown vulnerabilities in automotive software it is recommended to perform various types of testing such as fuzz testing or penetration testing. Fuzz testing is a powerful test approach since in contrast to penetration testing it can be automated, and it can be used to effectively detect unknown vulnerabilities in the target software. However, the fuzz testing activity is often performed in a manual manner in the automotive industry today. In this paper, we present a practical guide to building fuzz testing into a CI (continuous integration) pipeline. Using the Zephyr project as an example, we describe the various steps to build a fuzz testing process. These steps include identifying the target communication protocols to fuzz, defining a test strategy of when, what and how long to fuzz, executing fuzz testing on a continuous basis in an automated fashion, detecting exceptions on the target system, and generating relevant test reports. These practical steps are described in detail to help guide automotive organizations to build fuzz testing into the CI pipeline for their own target systems. Building fuzz testing into the CI pipeline enables automotive organizations to perform fuzz testing on a continuous basis and in an automated fashion which reduces the manual effort required. As a result, it is possible for automotive organizations to detect and fix unknown vulnerabilities early in the development process which reduces the involved costs and overall improves the product quality. We further discuss the benefits and provide additional insights on future needs in more detail in the paper."

Attention to safety and health are of ever-increasing priority to industrial organizations. Good Safety is demanded by stockholders, employees, and the community while increasing injury costs provide additional motivation for safety and health excellence. Safety has always been a strong corporate value of DuPont and a vital part of its culture. As a result, DuPont has become a benchmark in safety and health performance. Since 1990, DuPont has re-engineered itself to meet global competition and address future vision. In the new re-engineered organizational structures, DuPont has also had to re-engineer its safety management systems. A special Discovery Team was chartered by DuPont senior management to determine the “best practices’ for safety and health being used in DuPont best-performing sites. A summary of the findings is presented, and five of the practices are discussed. Excellence in safety and health management is more important today than ever. Public awareness, federal and state regulations, and enlightened management have resulted in a widespread conviction that all employees have the right to work in an environment that will not adversely affect their safety and health. In DuPont, we believe that excellence in safety and health is necessary to achieve global competitiveness, maintain employee loyalty, and be an accepted member of the communities in which we make, handle, use, and transport products. Safety can also be the “catalyst” to achieving excellence in other important business parameters. The organizational and communication skills developed by management, individuals, and teams in safety can be directly applied to other company initiatives. As we look into the 21st Century, we must also recognize that new organizational structures (flatter with empowered teams) will require new safety management techniques and systems in order to maintain continuous improvement in safety performance. Injury costs, which have risen dramatically in the past twenty years, provide another incentive for safety and health excellence. Shown in the Figure 1, injury costs have increased even after correcting for inflation. Many companies have found these costs to be an “invisible drain” on earnings and profitability. In some organizations, significant initiatives have been launched to better manage the workers’ compensation systems. We have found that the ultimate solution is to prevent injuries and incidents before they occur. A globally-respected company, DuPont is regarded as a well-managed, extremely ethical firm that is the benchmark in industrial safety performance. Like many other companies, DuPont has re-engineered itself and downsized its operations since 1985. Through these changes, we have maintained dedication to our principles and developed new techniques to manage in these organizational environments. As a diversified company, our operations involve chemical process facilities, production line operations, field activities, and sales and distribution of materials. Our customer base is almost entirely industrial and yet we still maintain a high level of consumer awareness and positive perception. The DuPont concern for safety dates back to the early 1800s and the first days of the company. In 1802 E.I. DuPont, a Frenchman, began manufacturing quality grade explosives to fill America’s growing need to build roads, clear fields, increase mining output, and protect its recently won independence. Because explosives production is such a hazardous industry, DuPont recognized and accepted the need for an effective safety effort. The building walls of the first powder mill near Wilmington, Delaware, were built three stones thick on three sides. The back remained open to the Brandywine River to direct any explosive forces away from other buildings and employees. To set the safety example, DuPont also built his home and the homes of his managers next to the powder yard. An effective safety program was a necessity. It represented the first defense against instant corporate liquidation. Safety needs more than a well-designed plant, however. In 1811, work rules were posted in the mill to guide employee work habits. Though not nearly as sophisticated as the safety standards of today, they did introduce an important basic concept — that safety must be a line management responsibility. Later, DuPont introduced an employee health program and hired a company doctor. An early step taken in 1912 was the keeping of safety statistics, approximately 60 years before the federal requirement to do so. We had a visible measure of our safety performance and were determined that we were going to improve it. When the nation entered World War I, the DuPont Company supplied 40 percent of the explosives used by the Allied Forces, more than 1.5 billion pounds. To accomplish this task, over 30,000 new employees were hired and trained to build and operate many plants. Among these facilities was the largest smokeless powder plant the world had ever seen. The new plant was producing granulated powder in a record 116 days after ground breaking. The trends on the safety performance chart reflect the problems that a large new work force can pose until the employees fully accept the company’s safety philosophy. The first arrow reflects the World War I scale-up, and the second arrow represents rapid diversification into new businesses during the 1920s. These instances of significant deterioration in safety performance reinforced DuPont’s commitment to reduce the unsafe acts that were causing 96 percent of our injuries. Only 4 percent of injuries result from unsafe conditions or equipment — the remainder result from the unsafe acts of people. This is an important concept if we are to focus our attention on reducing injuries and incidents within the work environment. World War II brought on a similar set of demands. The story was similar to World War I but the numbers were even more astonishing: one billion dollars in capital expenditures, 54 new plants, 75,000 additional employees, and 4.5 billion pounds of explosives produced — 20 percent of the volume used by the Allied Forces. Yet, the performance during the war years showed no significant deviation from the pre-war years. In 1941, the DuPont Company was 10 times safer than all industry and 9 times safer than the Chemical Industry. Management and the line organization were finally working as they should to control the real causes of injuries. Today, DuPont is about 50 times safer than US industrial safety performance averages. Comparing performance to other industries, it is interesting to note that seemingly “hazard-free” industries seem to have extraordinarily high injury rates. This is because, as DuPont has found out, performance is a function of injury prevention and safety management systems, not hazard exposure. Our success in safety results from a sound safety management philosophy. Each of the 125 DuPont facilities is responsible for its own safety program, progress, and performance. However, management at each of these facilities approaches safety from the same fundamental and sound philosophy. This philosophy can be expressed in eleven straightforward principles. The first principle is that all injuries can be prevented. That statement may seem a bit optimistic. In fact, we believe that this is a realistic goal and not just a theoretical objective. Our safety performance proves that the objective is achievable. We have plants with over 2,000 employees that have operated for over 10 years without a lost time injury. As injuries and incidents are investigated, we can always identify actions that could have prevented that incident. If we manage safety in a proactive — rather than reactive — manner, we will eliminate injuries by reducing the acts and conditions that cause them. The second principle is that management, which includes all levels through first-line supervisors, is responsible and accountable for preventing injuries. Only when senior management exerts sustained and consistent leadership in establishing safety goals, demanding accountability for safety performance and providing the necessary resources, can a safety program be effective in an industrial environment. The third principle states that, while recognizing management responsibility, it takes the combined energy of the entire organization to reach sustained, continuous improvement in safety and health performance. Creating an environment in which employees feel ownership for the safety effort and make significant contributions is an essential task for management, and one that needs deliberate and ongoing attention. The fourth principle is a corollary to the first principle that all injuries are preventable. It holds that all operating exposures that may result in injuries or illnesses can be controlled. No matter what the exposure, an effective safeguard can be provided. It is preferable, of course, to eliminate sources of danger, but when this is not reasonable or practical, supervision must specify measures such as special training, safety devices, and protective clothing. Our fifth safety principle states that safety is a condition of employment. Conscientious assumption of safety responsibility is required from all employees from their first day on the job. Each employee must be convinced that he or she has a responsibility for working safely. The sixth safety principle: Employees must be trained to work safely. We have found that an awareness for safety does not come naturally and that people have to be trained to work safely. With effective training programs to teach, motivate, and sustain safety knowledge, all injuries and illnesses can be eliminated. Our seventh principle holds that management must audit performance on the workplace to assess safety program success. Comprehensive inspections of both facilities and programs not only confirm their effectiveness in achieving the desired performance, but also detect specific problems and help to identify weaknesses in the safety effort. The Company’s eighth principle states that all deficiencies must be corrected promptly. Without prompt action, risk of injuries will increase and, even more important, the credibility of management’s safety efforts will suffer. Our ninth principle is a statement that off-the-job safety is an important part of the overall safety effort. We do not expect nor want employees to “turn safety on” as they come to work and “turn it off” when they go home. The company safety culture truly becomes of the individual employee’s way of thinking. The tenth principle recognizes that it’s good business to prevent injuries. Injuries cost money. However, hidden or indirect costs usually exceed the direct cost. Our last principle is the most important. Safety must be integrated as core business and personal value. There are two reasons for this. First, we’ve learned from almost 200 years of experience that 96 percent of safety incidents are directly caused by the action of people, not by faulty equipment or inadequate safety standards. But conversely, it is our people who provide the solutions to our safety problems. They are the one essential ingredient in the recipe for a safe workplace. Intelligent, trained, and motivated employees are any company’s greatest resource. Our success in safety depends upon the men and women in our plants following procedures, participating actively in training, and identifying and alerting each other and management to potential hazards. By demonstrating a real concern for each employee, management helps establish a mutual respect, and the foundation is laid for a solid safety program. This, of course, is also the foundation for good employee relations. An important lesson learned in DuPont is that the majority of injuries are caused by unsafe acts and at-risk behaviors rather than unsafe equipment or conditions. In fact, in several DuPont studies it was estimated that 96 percent of injuries are caused by unsafe acts. This was particularly revealing when considering safety audits — if audits were only focused on conditions, at best we could only prevent four percent of our injuries. By establishing management systems for safety auditing that focus on people, including audit training, techniques, and plans, all incidents are preventable. Of course, employee contribution and involvement in auditing leads to sustainability through stakeholdership in the system. Management safety audits help to make manage the “behavioral balance.” Every job and task performed at a site can do be done at-risk or safely. The essence of a good safety system ensures that safe behavior is the accepted norm amongst employees, and that it is the expected and respected way of doing things. Shifting employees norms contributes mightily to changing culture. The management safety audit provides a way to quantify these norms. DuPont safety performance has continued to improve since we began keeping records in 1911 until about 1990. In the 1990–1994 time frame, performance deteriorated as shown in the chart that follows: This increase in injuries caused great concern to senior DuPont management as well as employees. It occurred while the corporation was undergoing changes in organization. In order to sustain our technological, competitive, and business leadership positions, DuPont began re-engineering itself beginning in about 1990. New streamlined organizational structures and collaborative work processes eliminated many positions and levels of management and supervision. The total employment of the company was reduced about 25 percent during these four years. In our traditional hierarchical organization structures, every level of supervision and management knew exactly what they were expected to do with safety, and all had important roles. As many of these levels were eliminated, new systems needed to be identified for these new organizations. In early 1995, Edgar S. Woolard, DuPont Chairman, chartered a Corporate Discovery Team to look for processes that will put DuPont on a consistent path toward a goal of zero injuries and occupational illnesses. The cross-functional team used a mode of “discovery through learning” from as many DuPont employees and sites around the world. The Discovery Team fostered the rapid sharing and leveraging of “best practices” and innovative approaches being pursued at DuPont’s plants, field sites, laboratories, and office locations. In short, the team examined the company’s current state, described the future state, identified barriers between the two, and recommended key ways to overcome these barriers. After reporting back to executive management in April, 1995, the Discovery Team was realigned to help organizations implement their recommendations. The Discovery Team reconfirmed key values in DuPont — in short, that all injuries, incidents, and occupational illnesses are preventable and that safety is a source of competitive advantage. As such, the steps taken to improve safety performance also improve overall competitiveness. Senior management made this belief clear: “We will strengthen our business by making safety excellence an integral part of all business activities.” One of the key findings of the Discovery Team was the identification of the best practices used within the company, which are listed below: ▪ Felt Leadership – Management Commitment ▪ Business Integration ▪ Responsibility and Accountability ▪ Individual/Team Involvement and Influence ▪ Contractor Safety ▪ Metrics and Measurements ▪ Communications ▪ Rewards and Recognition ▪ Caring Interdependent Culture; Team-Based Work Process and Systems ▪ Performance Standards and Operating Discipline ▪ Training/Capability ▪ Technology ▪ Safety and Health Resources ▪ Management and Team Audits ▪ Deviation Investigation ▪ Risk Management and Emergency Response ▪ Process Safety ▪ Off-the-Job Safety and Health Education Attention to each of these best practices is essential to achieve sustained improvements in safety and health. The Discovery Implementation in conjunction with DuPont Safety and Environmental Management Services has developed a Safety Self-Assessment around these systems. In this presentation, we will discuss a few of these practices and learn what they mean. Paper published with permission.