Riley LED lenses improve eye fatigue
and reduce costs for automotive industry leader
By adopting Riley LED lenses, a world-leading automotive manufacturer successfully enhanced worker safety, improved cost efficiency, and optimised PPE performance across its operations.
For a world-leading automotive manufacturer operating in 13 markets, across 29 facilities and with over 133,000 employees worldwide, worker safety is especially important. Within the industry, workers face a range of high-risk tasks, making effective, comfortable, and high-performance PPE essential. Ensuring that employees are equipped with the right PPE not only enhances safety but also supports productivity, wellbeing, and operational efficiency across a global workforce.
The Situation
In factories and assembly centres, employees spend extended periods in brightly lit environments, making eye protection a crucial component of the company’s PPE strategy. LED and strip lighting are widely used in the automotive industry to enhance visibility for intricate handling tasks. However, prolonged exposure to these lighting conditions can negatively impact eye health, leading to fatigue, strain, and discomfort.
The manufacturer's initial solution to this was to provide workers with mirrored eyewear, to reflect the LED lighting from the eye, helping to reduce eye fatigue. Although this seemed like a viable solution, there were a few issues with the mirrored safety eyewear.
One major issue was restricted visibility and communication. The opaque mirrored lenses prevented forklift operators from making eye contact with colleagues, making it difficult for supervisors to ensure that workers operating heavy machinery were alert and focused, ultimately compromising workplace safety. Fogging on the outer of the lens also became a recurring problem. Employees frequently transition between indoor and outdoor environments and across varying humidity levels, causing condensation to build up on the lenses. This obstructed vision increases the likelihood of workers removing their eyewear, which could exposure them to additional hazards such as flying debris, dust, and liquid splashes.
The Solution
To maintain safety and efficiency, the automotive manufacturer required an upgraded eye protection solution that addressed these challenges while ensuring comfort and compliance.
In collaboration with a Globus representative, the Riley LED lens was developed, integrating a specialised pigment into Riley’s high-performance polycarbonate lens.
Engineered to enhance contrast and alleviate eye strain, this innovative lens is ideal for LED-lit indoor environments, making it particularly well-suited for industries such as vehicle manufacturing and engineering. Featuring a soothing light brown tint, the LED lens offers full clarity with a high Visible Light Transmission (VLT) of 69%, ensuring workers maintain sharp, unobstructed vision.
The LED lens is available across multiple Riley frame styles, providing an inclusive and adaptable PPE solution.
Maintaining Riley’s renowned high-impact protection, the upgraded safety eyewear shields workers from flying debris while ensuring superior durability and comfort, delivering the ultimate balance of safety, performance, and visual clarity.
The Benefits
As a result of swapping to the Riley LED lenses, eye fatigue was significantly reduced for employees working under LED lighting, and supervisors had an increased visibility of operators' state of alertness and focus.
Beyond the safety improvements, the manufacturer also experienced cost efficiencies. The switch to Riley eyewear resulted in a lower unit price compared to mirrored lenses, along with a uniform pricing structure across all eyewear, regardless of lens type streamlining procurement and budgeting.
The Riley lenses also have an anti-fog coating on both sides of the lenses that meets the 'K' (anti-scratch) and 'N' (anti-mist) standards of EN 166., reducing the risk of foggy lenses causing obstructed vision or workers removing their safety glasses.