Smartphones on the plant floor: Bring your own device (BYOD) or use company-owned devices? This question no doubt conjures up a multitude of things—good and bad—for personal devices on the plant floor, for example, connecting people with equipment and company data and providing workers with actionable information on the process and maintenance to make good decisions. However, allowing the use of personal communications equipment has its own set of potential problems, such as food safety, intellectual property theft, cybersecurity, worker safety and legal issues—a potential can of worms if not handled properly.

To begin, most food and beverage manufacturers have in place a policy that stipulates workers on the plant floor cannot have loose hanging jewelry, personal items and anything else carried above the waist that could potentially fall or be dropped into a vessel containing any substance that winds up in a food product—not to mention that a smartphone is probably one of the most unclean and difficult-to-sanitize pieces of equipment that could come into a food facility. This is simply a matter of FDA or USDA good manufacturing practices (GMPs). The same company policy typically applies in and around packaging equipment and other heavy-duty industrial machines, but mostly for safety reasons, such as keeping objects and peoples’ extremities out of dangerous equipment.