Efficient Plant April 2022 - 4

column | editorial
Sleep! W
Gary L. Parr
Editorial Director
HOOP IS A wearable device
and app that tracks your physiological
parameters and recovery
from strenuous physical activities. When I
first learned of the product, my reaction was,
there's another $30/month credit card charge
for something that will basically make me feel
guilty every day.
But it's not gimmick technology. I follow
world-class Irish track cyclist Orla Walsh (her
life story is worth checking out) and Whoop
drives her life. For most of us mopes, it's probably
not worth the investment.
At least that's what I thought until I listened
to a couple of Whoop podcasts while on my bike
pretending I was fit and fast. The guest on episode
164 was Dr. Allison Brager, a neuroscientist
and Major in the U.S. Army and the topic was
sleep. Dr. Brager views sleep as a bank in which
you can " store " sleep and go into debt. Sleep debt
is where the problems begin.
The average sleep need is 7 to 9 hr. each night.
Whoop host Kristen Holmes pointed to a study
Are your team members operating
with inadequate rest and is it
affecting plant reliability?
they did that showed a 5% to 10% decrease in
" executive function and cognitive control " if
you have a sleep debt of 45 min. Your mindset
can protect you unless you're chronically sleep
deprived, but three days of debt is the tipping
point. After that your cognitive functions
decline and you can't do anything about it.
No, you can't fix the problem with caffeine.
In fact, people who try to cover sleep debt with
caffeine perform worse. If you use caffeine " you
make bad decisions faster. "
When that show ended, I was climbing a hill
and couldn't pause to switch to another podcast.
The app automatically went to a conversation
with U.S. Coast Guard Commander Scott
Austin, who is responsible for helicopter flight
crews. The topic was again sleep and the role it
plays in team mission readiness.
A volunteer study equipped 20 soldiers with
Whoop straps for a month. In that month,
soldiers wore the app 24 hr./day and went from
trusting their own intuition about how well/
long they were sleeping to trusting the strap data
and realizing they were not getting the rest they
thought they were getting.
It was during this podcast that my mind
started wandering to the impact of rest on plant
maintenance and safety. While the chance
of crashing an aircraft during normal plant
activities is relatively minimal, there are plenty
of functions that require people to be rested and
at their cognitive best. How many times have
people failed to perform a procedure properly
because they were not well rested and couldn't
focus? Is poor sleep a culprit in safety incidents?
It seems that there's an opportunity for an
experiment if you have the right culture and
team. You don't need to equip everyone with
a Whoop strap, though it sure seems to be an
effective and accurate tool. If you simply want
to experiment with sleep, any of today's smart
watches can monitor sleep patterns. If you did a
30-day test period and asked your team to track
their sleep, would performance and, therefore,
plant reliability improve? Could be a cost-free
pilot project with a significant upside. EP
gparr@efficientplantmag.com
4 | EFFICIENTPLANTMAG.COM
APRIL 2022
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Efficient Plant April 2022

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