The Role of Rugged Tablets and Chest Mounts in Critical Operations with Emergence of Industry 4.0 (Oil and Gas)

While use of rugged computers for critical operations has been around for many years, the shift to Industry 4.0 is changing the landscape. With diminishing margins in many industries where safe operation in hazardous environment is becoming even more crucial, the emergence of Industry 4.0 is proving to be the key to success. As IoT sensors are providing more datapoints, the processing requirements of computers are increasing and so is the need for quick and accurate decision making in complex operations and manufacturing.

The new generations of Rugged Tablets are not only designed for hazardous area classifications (Class I and Class II, Div. 1 and Div.2), but also have evolved to be more powerful, lighter, more durable, and better suited to keep up with the digital revolution and emergence of Industry 4.0. The abundance of accessories and ease of use is also helping with employee adoption compared to previous generations.

Getac UX10 and F110 Rugged Tablets are perfect examples of where Industry 4.0 meets critical operations and hazardous environment. The UX10 tablet with ATEX and IECEx Zone 2/22 certification, 10.1” Touchscreen, RF antenna pass-through and WWAN and WLAN, Bluetooth, Wi-fi, and 4G LTE connectivity is ideal for a facility operators and maintenance personnel that need to download information from IoT field devices, process information, and make critical decisions. The F110 tablet which has a larger display (11.6″) than UX10 is also widely used as the rugged tablet option in many industries.

The use of these rugged tablets can be further enhanced by custom designed Chest Mounts by ProCustom Group. These chest mounts enable facility operators, maintenance personnel, and mechanics to have better accessibility to the tablet while working closely with the machinery or equipment. ProCustom Group engineers have exclusively designed the chest mount to work with the UX10 and F110 Rugged Tablets, while giving the user the freedom of performing the most demanding tasks. The chest mount can be further customized to allow for removable customized interface cable entries that may be used for connecting to field devices or when tethered connections are required. The combination of the custom designed chest mount and the rugged tablet is paving the way for taking full advantage of Industry 4.0.